Possible Safari 4.0.3 issue

Hi all,

I'm Kate - I'm an outbrain employee. We've just become aware of this issue and we're all hands on deck trying to fix it right now. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Thanks to everyone who has provided information on this thread. I'll be sure to update you all as soon as we've got things sorted out. Feel free to email me directly if you want to bring up specific concerns. kate at outbrain dot com

Kate Heffernan

that's the question right there.

and, what of the javascript version we installed, too, as this seems to happen with Firefox and Vienna.

if it's a problem greater than Safari alone, then the jscript aspect will need attention as well.

r

We think we've figured out a way to stop the problem by disabling part of our web analytics and we've rolled out the fix. The issue was only affecting people using the Tiger OS and Safari 4.0.3. If anyone encounters this issue again or on another OS please contact me at kate at outbrain dot com

Thanks for all of your help here - the information you all provided in this forum was extremely helpful in getting the issue resolved as quickly as possible.

Thanks again,
Kate

Kate, I am glad your company is working on this. But just so you know, this problem just now started affecting my computer, running 10.4.11 on a PowerPC Dual, with the newest version of Safari. Two of these desktop files in the last hour.

Sorry to report that all is not well. But at least I am a bit reassured that this is not malware. Please advise this list that you see my email and are getting folks to take care of it. It is very disturbing to have files involuntarily downloaded in to my root folder.

Thanks, Peter

The Safari update seems to come under the heading, "Many Changes - No Improvements". Safari pages are loading as slowly as Windows now. Disappointing? Yes. I sure many people have sent emails to Apple about this. I will soon send my own message of disapointment to them too.

I have had enough of Safari 4.0.3 and am trying to go back to 4.0.2. I have deleted everything I can find from safari, going through libraries, preferences, receipts, etc, but when I try to reinstall 4.0.2, I get the message that a "newer version is on my machine and can go no further. I can't even install the 3.0 family of Safari. How do you get rid of this thing?

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the heads up here - I'm going to continue responding to this issue on this thread- http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2114731

Kate

This is meant to be informative, not as a rant, and I do not mean to invite any rants by posting this (ranting won't change anything, anyway. Apple does not monitor these forums). Last year, after a Security Update (beginning with, I believe, 2008-007) many Tiger users when trying to enter Network Preferences reported getting an endlessly looping pop up saying, "Network Preferences have been changed by another Application."

This was the first, but it is only one of many related threads. Seventeen pages long and counting.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8098920

I'm ready to be corrected, but it seemed to be happening only to those who installed the Tiger update. There were a number of ad hoc workarounds and fixes developed by users, but Apple, in subsequent security updates, never, to my knowledge, resolved the problem or developed a patch. It was a completely head in the sand response. Apple and Apple tech reps were certainly aware of the issue, since they were, themselves, suggesting one of the (lamer, non-permanent) workarounds by telephone. It was reported directly to Apple as a bug by a number of people.

To this day there are still people on the forums here--presumably those who only just discover it when they try to enter Network Preferences for the first time since those updates--reporting the looping pop up. My feeling then was that Apple's writing updates for Tiger--as a soon to be orphaned OS version--was becoming slipshod or, that Tiger users weren't getting a fully Tiger dedicated update. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone using Leo reported this issue. As the Security Updates are usually cumulative, I wouldn't be surprised if this bug is still present in the latest one.

This seemingly Tiger only issue in Safari 4.0.3 bears a striking resemblance to the presumably Tiger only issue I just described.

I would be more than happy if Apple corrects this in a subsequent update for its poor cousins still using Tiger, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

lyndonr;

I'm not sure that you can get rid of Safari 4.x by simply tracking down its components and trashing them.

Some upgrades, like certain ones for iTunes and, I think, Safari, make changes to the system components on a more fundamental level than simply installing a program with an icon you can see.

Others here prbly have a better way to phrase it in programming/software language, but some software upgrades to apple programs not only install those apps, but afterward, your system is not the same, can not be back-graded, and the only remedy is to back up all your files and do a nuke-and-pave, installing up to the Safari, or iTunes, or whichever version of the app(s) you were at before you upgraded.

I am not usually an "early adopter" on stuff like this..I like to see how it's working for others before I take the upgrade. But I saw Safari 4 as a way to again have RSS feeds in my browser, rather than have a separate app for RSS, and friends upgraded, so I thot, "what the hey!?"

the other poster is prbly spot-on referring to Tiger users as orphans. Tiger is in the past. Even Leopard is soon to be in the past, along with any PPC machine which could run it.

I can see apple's position...they want to sell new machines and new copies of their OS, not maintain old ones which have already been bought n paid for.

my nahelem mac pro is not connected to the intertoobs; my G4 minis do that job, so I guess I'll have to figure out how to live life on the web with a PPC/Tiger set up.


r

Message was edited by: RaySkater

Message was edited by: RaySkater

I haven't tried this myself, but feedback was positive on it. These are instructions for uninstallilng 4 and reverting to 3 (but I see no reason you can't revert to an earlier version of 4.0) without doing an Archive and Install.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9703071#9703071

BUT IT'S SUPPOSED TO WORK IN TIGER ONLY.

Just do the first uninstall part (drop the instructions to install 3.) and then re-install the 4.02, or whatever, from the dmg for the version you want already downloaded; find this in Apple Downloads.

OK friends...that seems to have worked for me (the uninstall 4, re-install 3.11 which is linked above).

I'm keeping Safari's "Downloads" window open for awhile just in case those mystery thingies start downloading themselves again.

r

Most of us haven't mentioned the word "virus", Golden Shoes. There's clearly a problem here and the behavior does raise questions about security.

As I and others have described here, Golden Shoes, this problem is not limited to obd.outbrain.com .
Users should have to use a tool to tinker under the OS hood to deal with a flaw which may have been enabled by a browser update.

gjanee wrote:

The fact that Safari is writing files in the filesystem outside its cache, let alone reading them, shows that something is possibly seriously broken with the JavaScript/Flash sandbox security model.

Turning off JavaScript is just not an option on today's Web.

Well said, gjanee.

Impossible to find 4.0.2 or just 4.0 from Apple or any of the update sites, *but 3.2.3 is still available*

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/safari323fortige r.html


For instructions to revert (Works for Tiger only. Substitute the 3.2.3 for the 3.1.1), see above at

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10026376#10026376

(Caveat: 3.2.3 is lacking a number of security patches found in 4.0 and above. It seems a reasonable assumption the downloads are not malware. *Could be a vector for future malware?* But until more is known, hard to say which would be worse, the unwanted downloads or the unpatched older Safari).