dailyApps

Well, A lot of people have been complaining about Small but important bugs in the latest version of the Mac Operating system from the Cupertino based company that is Apple. There have been reports of BSOD’s (Blue Screen of Death), Random Crashes etc.. and here is one more that you can add to this list that continues to grow everyday.

Please note that this bug may not be a bug for most people, but it is a bug nonetheless. I’m not bashing away Apple here, but I’d have expected Apple to fix all these bugs before the release of Leopard. Anyway’s enough of crap talk, and here is what the bug is and how can reproduce it,

Steps to reproduce:

• Have existing, up-to-date Time Machine backups.
• Delete a protocol handler.
• Visit a web site that uses that protocol.

Expected results:

• Mac OS X will respect that the application has been removed.

Actual results:

• Mac OS X will hand it off to the application on the Time Machine backup volume.

This doesn’t happen only with Protocol handlers, but also with Applications. For example if you removed an app, and then tried to open a file that relies on that App for its functioning, OS X will still open the file using the backups that has been stored in Time Machine. Now this can be a potential exploit, say if an App has a vulnerability and you deleted it, now if OS X was to continue to use the App from Time Machine, then it can wreck security havoc on your Mac. Note that the situation isn’t as serious as I have been putting it so far, but it can be dangerous.

The workaround right now seems to be delete all copies of the App from Time Machine. You have to use the context menu within Time Machine to delete all copies of the file. Atleast  I would expect OS X to popup a warning that it is using a backup from Time Machine to open a particular file.

Via  Pyile