Apple patch over 50 bugs in a single day of updating

Cupertino (CA) - Apple yesterday rolled out a total of 52 patches, 41 of which tackled vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X operating system.

Of the 41 OS X patches, 15 fell under the "critical" category because they could lead to significant damages to the computer through what Apple calls "arbitrary code execution".

The other 26 updates to Apple’s most popular operating system dealt with vulnerabilities ranging from enabling malicious Web code downloads to crashing certain applications to enabling hackers to remotely download local files on the hard drive.

Ncircle director of security, Andrew Storms, noted that most of the patches weren’t directly dealing with Apple software. Most of them "dealt primarily with third-party applications shipped with Apple’s operating systems," he was quoted as saying in a Computerworld story.

Releasing 41 patches simultaneously for one platform makes it one of the biggest in Apple’s history, and certainly the most notable so far this year.

In addition to fixing Mac OS X, Apple put out a lone update to Leopard, its newly released successor to OS X. This update involved iPhoto, patching only minor cosmetic bugs.

The rest of yesterday’s 10 updates are attributed to Safar For Windows, the cross-platform version of Apple’s Web browser. Most of these were described as "cross-site scripting" vulnerabilities, which include tools that hackers use to gain access to sensitive information like passwords. One update, however, was classified as critical because it could allow remote code execution.