The "bring your own device" movement is gaining major momentum. That's why Apple's latest round of patches may concern enterprise  IT admins.
Apple on Monday updated Safari to version 5.1.4 as it patched a whopping 83 vulnerabilities. It's a record for Safari 5, and the fact that 72 of the flaws were rated critical didn't help ease the concern. The saving grace: None of the vulnerabilities has been exploited in attacks. But mobile industry watchers are still concerned about the ripple effect.
"The consumerization of enterprise mobility -- most visibly manifested by the BYOD trend -- has now moved on to the application front," said Philippe Winthrop, mobility analyst and founder of the Enterprise Mobility Forum. "Organizations are now quickly recognizing the power and value of providing mobile applications to both their employees and their customers. Despite this, many companies are still faced with the challenge of striking the balance between maintaining security and control for IT, while preserving the user-experience of the device for the employee."
Was Apple Pwned?
Although Apple also improved JavaScript performance in its Safari 5.1.4 update, as well as enhanced search field responsiveness, and fixed some interfaces for viewing Flash content after zooming in, most industry watchers are focusing on security.
"Since Safari and Chrome both use WebKit, the open-source browser engine, it allows Apple to reap the benefits of Google's web bounty program, which is responsible for the majority of the Safari WebKit-related fixes," said Marcus Carey, security researcher at Rapid7. "The timing of these patches also comes on the heels of CanSecWest Pwn2Own and Google's Pwnium competitions, where researchers try to research and exploit browser bugs."
Whenever there are new products announced from Apple, people should always expect tons of updates containing security fixes, product enhancements, and of course Apple's ever-changing EULA, Carey said. Shortly after he saw the new iPad announcement, he started noticing prompts for updating software and agreeing to new terms on his Apple products.
"There are a couple of takeaways from this -- the first being that Apple products are 'hacker proof' is a myth. With the bring-your-own-device movement gaining steam in IT enterprises, there are many organizations that have Apple products appearing in their networks without the tools to manage them," Carey said. "Even just allowing employees to install iTunes on their machines exposes the organization to Safari/WebKit vulnerabilities." (continued...)
Lee:
Posted: 2012-03-14 @ 2:42am PT
I think everyone's missing the point of this article. Apple has had it easy up until now because they had so little of the market, they weren't targeted much. Now that their market share is growing and they're becoming more present in enterprise environments that aren't prepared for them through BYOD schemes, they will be targeted more. These patches have been released, but if they haven't been applied, users are still vulnerable, so in enterprises where there are no systems in place to monitor this, you are exposed. Let's not forget that the exploit that conficker took advantage of had been patched before conficker was released, but unpatched systems meant it still spread.
joberele:
Posted: 2012-03-13 @ 6:54pm PT
This article is best described as a pack of FUD.
PhillyG:
Posted: 2012-03-13 @ 4:23pm PT
I don't understand how installing iTunes creates a security risk if iTunes is only used to communicate with Apple and Apple's iCloud.
GC:
Posted: 2012-03-13 @ 3:36pm PT
Why is it that every story about computer security focuses on the wrong metric. The number of patches is a meaningless number because it does not answer the more important question. How many unpatched vulnerabilities remain? If anything a large number of patches should be considered a good thing since it means that there are that many fewer to worry about.
Anyway, it's the amount of exploits in the wild that is the more meaningful number and in that respect Apple is winning hands down.
Don108:
Posted: 2012-03-13 @ 3:10pm PT
There are over a million pieces of malware for Windows in the field. Many pieces of Windows malware can install and run themselves with no users involvement. Malware for Linux is much better, but still there. There is only a handful of malware for the Mac, and most requires user actions to install and run. Now, Apple has fixed POTENTIAL openings to malware before any was even detected.
Your complaint in this article is like complaining about the quality of a pane of glass in a window while your entire house is burning down.
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