A critical vulnerability discovered in Apple Computer Inc."s Mac OS X could be exploited remotely by an attacker to compromise a user"s system. Danish vulnerability clearinghouse Secunia rated the flaw highly critical because it can be remotely exploited by an attacker in the Safari Web browser when the "opening safe files after downloading" option is enabled, Secunia said in its advisory.
The flaw, discovered by security researcher who goes by the name "LMH," is an integer overflow error in the ffs_mountfs() function. When the ffs mountfs() function handles UFS filesystem disc images the operating system can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow by using a UFS DMG image, LMH said in his Month of Apple Bugs Web site. The flaw can lead to an exploitable denial of service condition and potential arbitrary code execution, LMH said.