First major Safari security bug

Mac fanboys, prepare your empathy - usually it's the poor Windows users who have all the security pain, this time it's heading your way.

Apple's Safari web browser for both the Mac and Windows suffers from a serious vulnerability that can expose emails, passwords and other sensitive contents of a user's hard drive, a researcher has warned.

The good news is that this only effects Leopard (OS X 10.5) users. The badder news is it doesn't matter whether you use Safari or Firefox; you're still vulnerable. The baddest news is that there's not patch.

The good news is that there's a workaround. It's a Real Good Idea to do this right now. Yes, I'll wait.

Leopard users can protect themselves by opening Safari and selecting Preferences from the Safari menu, choosing the RSS tab, clicking on the Default Reader pop-up window and selecting an application other than Safari.

Oh, and if you run Windows and use Safari, you should switch to a different browser until it's fixed. As both my readers know, I like Firefox because of its considerably better security profile.

Folks using Tiger (OS X 10.4) can stand down - you're not at risk.