Safari on your hard drive
I don't agree with this Firefox guy who says Safari is malware. I thought malware was placed on your system without consent, this Safari browser is given to a person as an option for installation. When I saw this update for Safari appear I simply closed the window and didn't update any of my Apple software. Sort of like what I do when a Firefox update is first put out and I'm told to update it. Never trust a brand new patch for a system. Let the uber hardcore tech people put it on their system first in case it craters their box.
posted by Sphinx at
6:24 AM
3 Comments:
"Sort of like what I do when a Firefox update is first put out and I'm told to update it. Never trust a brand new patch for a system. Let the uber hardcore tech people put it on their system first in case it craters their box."
That's a pretty dangerous path. When we offer an update for Firefox, it's already been tested by tens of thousands of beta testers and it's explicitely designed to fix security holes. Not taking the update when we offer it is extremely dangerous because as soon as the update goes out, the bad guys know exactly what's broken in the previous version and can build and deploy exploits for those holes in hours.
Delaying a stability and security update is a very bad thing. We work hard to ensure that those updates (the minor versions, like from 2.0.11 to 2.0.12) are extremely limited in their changes so that they're not risky to take. What apple's doing is blurring the line between crazy changes like entirely new products and security updates. Delaying new products is one thing. Delaying security updates is just foolish and Apple's making the situation more confusing.
yeah - unless it's a patch for some sort of security (zero-day) exploit, I usually let it sit for a few days before accepting it.
Asa, thanks for posting, never thought I'd see actual people beyond some friends comment on my blog! Next up, deluxe apartment in the sky.
Since it's my personal PC at home I don't worry too much about it. I'm running a hardware firewall, a software firewall, plus antivirus systems across the entire thing so my level of vulnerability, I feel, is pretty low. Plus, I use the best anti-hack tool out there: the off switch when I'm not at home.
Now of course my work environment is a little different. Test the patch first then deploy it across the enterprise and make sure our firewall group keeps any possible exploit ports shutdown till we can get the patches to everyone. Pretty standard procedure there but it works.
I'm a bit jaded on any patches after one incident a few years ago where I applied a patch to an Exchange server and the server blue screened, cratered, and had to be rebuilt. Watching your email server die with a brand new patch that was "guaranteed" makes a person cynical really really quick.
Thanks for the feedback! I guess if I knew how to start a poll here we could make it a game: "How quickly do you patch your box."
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