More Serious QuickTime Flaws
Apple released yet another update to fix multiple dangerous holes in its QuickTime media player software for both Mac and Windows (affecting XP, 2000, and Vista).
The patch closes eight critical vulnerabilities in how the player handles a variety of media files--and annoyingly it will put QuickTime on your desktop and in your system tray whether you want it there or not. An attacker exploiting any of the flaws could hit you with a drive-by download if you visit a rigged site or click on an e-mail link to a poisoned movie, so make sure that you have version 7.1.5 or later. Learn more from Apple's page on the security content of QuickTime 7.1.5.
More Battery Woes
Lenovo is recalling and replacing 205,000 (100,000 in the United States) lithium ion laptop batteries for ThinkPads sold between November 2003 and February 2005, due to an overheating problem that can occur if the battery is dropped or hit. To find out if your battery is affected, see Lenovo's battery recall support page.
Apple OS X Bugs
Apple patched 45 bugs in OS X, including several critical security flaws. The new, corrected version is Mac OS X 10.4.9 and Security Update 2007-003.
So Long, Firefox 1.5
Two recent patches correct critical security holes in Firefox 2.0 and 1.5 (the fixed versions are 2.0.0.3 and 1.5.0.11). But Mozilla stopped supporting (and fixing) version 1.5 as of April 24, so if you haven't yet upgraded to version 2, do it now. Find the upgrade at Mozilla's FireFox site.
Found a hardware or software bug? Send us an e-mail on it to bugs@pcworld.com.
Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing editor for PC World.
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