Safari on Windows ventures into first security flaw

Security researcher Aviv Raff claims to have found a first security vulnerability in Apple's Safari browser on Windows only hours after the software was released.

Raff tested the application against a standard browser security testing tool.

"A first glance at the debugger showed me that this memory corruption might be exploitable. Although, I'll have to dig more to be sure of that," he wrote on his blog.

Apple on Monday unveiled a beta of a Windows version of its Safari web browser. The final product is scheduled for release in October.

In a keynote presentation at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, chief executive Steve Jobs touted that the browser would up to twice as fast as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but didn't mention Internet Explorer's security record.

Apple lists the browser's security as one of twelve reasons as to "Why you'll love Safari" and adds that "Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one."

Raff earlier this year worked on the "Month of Apple bugs", during which researchers published details on a slew of vulnerabilities in the Apple software. It was intended to challenge Apple's security record. He took the company's boasting about Safari's security as a personal challenge.

"So, I've decided to take it for a test drive and ran Hamachi. I wasn't surprised to get a nice crash few minutes later...," he wrote. Hamachi is a tool that tests a browser's integrity.

"Don't you hate those pathetic claims?" he flamed in the closing of his post in reference to Apple's marketing speak.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.