AirPort Extreme Base Station Security Update

Apple today released a security update for the AirPort Extreme base station. Firmware version 7.2.1 fixes the following: “Remote attackers may be able to adversely affect network performance.” This doesn’t sound too serious, but as always, every little security update ensures the overall security of your system and/or network.

For the more technically inclined:

A design issue exists in the IPv6 protocol’s handling of type 0 routing headers. Depending on network topology and capacity, the reception of specially crafted IPv6 packets may lead to a reduction in network bandwidth. This update addresses the issue by disabling the support for type 0 routing headers. This issue does not affect the Gigabit Ethernet version of AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n.

Whatever….

You can get the update by running AirPort Utility, which will detect the new firmware version and install it onto your AirPort Extreme base station.

Time for Some Microsoft Security Updates

Microsoft today issued security updates for Office 2004 for Mac, and for Virtual PC 6.1 and 7, for Mac. The Office update resolves the following:

“This critical security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability. This vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page. The vulnerability could be exploited through attacks on Object Linking and Embedding (OLE).”

And this too:

“This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in addition to other security issues identified during the course of the investigation. These vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file.”

(More information on Microsoft’s web site, here and here.)

And the Virtual PC update fixes this:

“This important security update resolves one privately reported vulnerability. This is an elevation of privilege vulnerability. The vulnerability in Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server could allow a guest operating system user to run code on the host or another guest operating systems.”

(More information on this page.)

You can download updaters for both these issues on this web page.

Keep safe!

Another Opera Update

For the second time in a month, Opera Software has updated their Opera web browser for security reasons. This fix corrects a JavaScript security issue. If you use Opera, download the latest version here.