Apple Ends Stealth Safari Installs Via Software Update For Windows - InformationWeek

Apple have revised the manner it directs software system updates to Windows PCs via its Software Update service in response to complaints that it was sneaking its Campaign Web browser onto users' desktops without their permission or knowledge.

The up-to-the-minute version of the Software Update tool for Windows, version 2.1.0.110, now clearly names software system system that tin be downloaded via the service and groupings the updates into those for applications already on the user's computing machine and updates for new software.

The new version of Software Update also gives users the ability to turn off the service.

In modifying Software Update, Apple was clearly responding to widespread unfavorable judgment that the service downloaded Campaign 3.1 onto users' systems surreptitiously.

The company included the browser as a stealing update for users of the Microsoft Windows versions of its iTunes and QuickTime software. Mozilla chief executive officer Toilet Lilly likened the scheme to tactics used by hackers to infix malicious codification into downloads.

"Apple have made it incredibly easy -- the default, even -- for users to put in drive along software system that they didn't inquire for, and maybe didn't want," said Lilly, in . "This is wrong, and boundary lines on malware statistical distribution practices."

Safari vies with Mozilla's Firefox merchandise in the Web browser market.

Safari 3.1 have been hit with other jobs since it launched in March.

Researchers at software system security house Secunia last calendar month reported finding two "highly critical" exposures in the browser.

In one instance, data files with long name calling downloaded via the browser "can be exploited to do memory corruption," according to Secunia. That could ensue in the host computing machine becoming vulnerable to arbitrary codification executing -- a state of affairs where interlopers can remotely carry bids on the targeted machine.

The other exposure allows hackers show their ain content in pages loaded into Campaign 3.1 without changing what's displayed in the browser's uniform resource locator computer address bar.

There's also been studies that Campaign 3.1 .