Microsoft warned of a serious risk of Safari
Microsoft on Friday warned of a serious risk to people who use Safari on Windows XP or Vista, going so far as to suggest people “restrict use of Safari as a web browser until an appropriate update is available from Microsoft and/or Apple.”
The threat targets two separate flaws, one in Safari and one in IE, and you’d have to first browse a malicious site with Safari. Doing so would download unwanted software onto your desktop, which could then be executed without your permission by triggering a separate flaw in IE (and you wouldn’t have to start IE to get hit). In its security advisory, Microsoft acknowledges the critical risk of ‘remote code execution,’ which is as bad as it gets.
If you do use Safari, Microsoft says you can apply a workaround to protect yourself. Change the default download location (normally the desktop) in Safari with the following steps:
Launch Safari. Under the Edit menu select Preferences.
At the option where it states Save Downloaded Files to:, select a different location on the local drive.
source:[pcworld]
