Snow Leopard Guest Account Reset Issue

There have been reports that if you have guest accounts enabled in Leopard and perform an upgrade to Snow Leopard accounts will be reset in the same manner that guest accounts are. It is recommended that guest accounts be disabled before upgrade. After the upgrade setup guest accounts in Snow Leopard if needed. It is of course my recommendation that you never use guest accounts except in exceptionally controlled environment. 

An alternative to guest accounts is setting up an managed user account with no password and using Parental controls to apply restrictions, one downside is the account will not reset. If you do experience a reset of user folders you can do the following to restore them:

Restore the entire system from Time Machine.

Restore just the home folder. (This requires additional procedures.)

Update on Monday, November 9, 2009 at 11:33PM by drStrangeP0rk

This has been fixed in APPLE-SA-2009-11-09-1 Security Update 2009-006 / Mac OS X v10.6.2

Cell Network Phishing Scam Using Text Messaging iPhone

Their have been reports of a Phishing scam affecting various cell phone networks including AT&T which the iPhone is on. The Phishing expedition is conducted using text messaging. Users are told to call a number to solve a problem with their account, their credit card information is then harvested. Users should be aware that phishing can take place using traditional means and non-traditional means. We have become used to not responding to email but this is another vector of attack to steal information. 

Users have to remember that just like phone calls and email, text messaging is a means to an end for an attacker. Administrators should remind users regularly about communication trends and common best practices used for any communication, regardless of method.

To listen to a tested transaction follow this link.

http://johannes.homepc.org/scam.mp3

Adobe Addresses CVE-2009-3459

Adobe will be releasing an update for Acrobat Reader 9.1.3 and Acrobat 9.1.3 for Macintosh and Windows versions. A critical vulnerability exist and is being exploited in the wild, users should disable JavaScript in Acrobat. Adobe is reporting that it is possiable that an attacker may be able to work around this and conduct the exploit taking control of your machine. Users should use caution and only open PDF from trusted sites.

The release is expected to be available on October 13, 2009.

iTunes 9.0.1 Patches Buffer Overflow

Apple has released iTunes 9.0.1 which addresses a buffer overflow in Mac OSX Server/Client and Windows. A malicious .pls file could be used to cause program termination or lead to code execution. The update improves the bound checking in iTunes. Users should install the update as soon as possible using Software Update or directly from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

APPLE-SA-2009-09-14-1 Xsan 2.2

Using Xsan Admin application for screen sharing embedded user credentials including passwords can result in an error dialog containing the user name and password. The password could be then shoulder surfed by another user  within view of the display.