Apple announced on Tuesday that is has addressed multiple security holes with the release of Safari 8.0.4, Safari 7.1.4, and Safari 6.2.4.
According to a security advisory published by the company, a total of 16 memory corruption issues have been identified in WebKit, the layout engine software component used by the browser for rendering web pages.
As usual, Apple has not disclosed the details of the vulnerabilities, but the company has noted that visiting a malicious website set up to exploit these flaws can lead to unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. The issues have been fixed through improved memory handling, Apple said.
Another vulnerability identified in WebKit and fixed in the latest versions of Safari has been described as a user interface inconsistency (CVE-2015-1084) and it can be leveraged by an attacker to misrepresent the URL.
“Inconsistent user interface may prevent users from discerning a phishing attack,” Apple wrote in the advisory. The security hole has been addressed in Safari 8.0.4, Safari 7.1.4, and Safari 6.2.4 through improved user interface consistency checks.
A majority of the issues were discovered by Apple’s own security team, and one of the bugs was reported by the Google Chrome Security Team.
Last week, Apple released security updates for several of its products, including iOS, OS X, Apple TV, and Xcode. The iOS and OS X updates addressed several vulnerabilities, including the recently disclosed FREAK bug, which allows an attacker to downgrade encrypted SSL/TLS sessions and force clients to use a weaker, export-grade RSA cipher.
