Late last night while I was walking my dog Apple released several patches for Mac OS as well as the first update for the iPhone. The six patches released fixed several security bugs and other flaws in Mac OS (including the server versions) and the iPhone. Apple has also released Safari ver. 3.0.3 for Mac and Windows.
The update downloads via iTunes while you sync your iPhone. The most obvious reason for this update is the huge security gap that the guys over at Independent Security Evaluatorsdiscovered. The update addresses the issue by ”performing additional validation of JavaScript regular expressions.” This comes just days before ISE was to announce the vulnerability at the annual Black Hat security conference.
In a rather classy move, Apple gave credit to the hackers at ISE that discovered the security issue that could allow someone to completely take over an iPhone. Charlie Miller and Jake Honoroff of ISE are named right in the update notes. Which I think is rather nice.
Of course the update does more than just block this security hole. Users who have downloaded update 1.0.1 are reporting less crashing while browsing and playing music, a noticeable improvement in volume level, and the ability to drag content from iTunes to the iPhone. For more information on the features of the update visit this PC World article.
A quick note for those who have hacked their iPhones: the update hates you. If you’ve hacked your iPhone and try to install the update your phone will probably crash, restore, and finish the download. This also means that you’ll lose most, if not all, of your settings. For more info about the update and what it does to hacked iPhones check out this article from Gizmodo.