Updates address Xcode Server issue, security flaws, respectively

Feb 26, 2014 10:10 GMT  ·  By

As part of the update rampage that’s been going on over the past few days, Apple Inc. has released a new version of OS X Server and an updated QuickTime platform for Windows customers in particular.

OS X Server

On the OS X front, Apple’s new Server release isn’t the all-new 3.1 update that the company has been testing internally for the past few months. Rather, it is an incremental (and minor) 3.0.3 update meant to fix an Xcode Server issue that prevented the addition of new users.

According to a lengthier set of release notes on Apple Support, “Server v3.0.3 improves the general stability of OS X Server” and delivers specific improvements, including the aforementioned Xcode thing and all the improvements from Server v3.0.2 and v3.0.1. In other words, OS X Server 3.0.3 supersedes previous OS X Server 3.x.x releases.

The Cupertino company informs customers that “OS X Server v3.0.3 is available from the Mac App Store. It appears in the Updates pane if you have OS X Server (Mavericks) installed.”

Customers are instructed to click the Update button to install the new version.

“To prevent the interruption of services, Server updates are not automatically installed, even if you have chosen to automatically install other updates from the Mac App Store,” Apple adds.

Users are also told not to panic if they see the message “Server app replacement detected” during the installation. The Mac maker says, “This is a normal part of the update process. All Server settings and data are preserved during the update.”

Users must open the Server app to finish setting up previously-configured services after the 3.0.3 update is done installing.

QuickTime 7.7.5 for Windows

Apple released QuickTime 7.7.5 with the sole purpose of improving the security of the player on Windows XP SP2 (or newer), Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Highly-recommended for all QuickTime 7 users on Windows, the update patches close to a dozen recently found vulnerabilities, some more serious than others.

QuickTime 7.7.5 update available for Windows customers
QuickTime 7.7.5 update available for Windows customers

For example, an uninitialized pointer issue existed in the handling of track lists. According to Apple, “Playing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.”

A buffer overflow was present in the handling of H.264 encoded movie files, where playing a movie file that was crafted with bad intention would lead to the same scenario.

In some cases, “viewing a maliciously crafted PSD image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution,” Apple says. This was the case with another buffer overflow, this time in the handling of PSD images.

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OS X Server
QuickTime 7.7.5 update available for Windows customers
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