Software Engineering Institute

Apple Airport products are 802.11b and 802.11g compatible wireless devices that are produced by Apple. Airport Extreme wireless adapters are capable of joining 802.11g wireless networks.

A buffer overflow vulnerability has been reported in Orinoco-based Airport drivers. An attacker within radio range may be able to trigger the overflow by sending a specially-crafted 802.11 management frame to a vulnerable system. Since 802.11b and 802.11g management frames are not encrypted, using wireless encryption (WEP/WPA) does not mitigate this vulnerability.

Per Apple, this vulnerability affects eMac, iBook, iMac, PowerBook G3, PowerBook G4, and Power Mac G4 systems using their original wireless adapter. Airport Extreme devices and drivers are not affected by this vulnerability.

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges.

Upgrade
Apple has released Security Update 2006-007 to address this issue.

Disable wireless adapters

Disabling wireless adapters may reduce the chances of this vulnerability being exploited.

Use wired networking methods until updates can be applied

Using wired networks, such as Ethernet adapters or other extended LAN technologies, until vulnerable wireless drivers can be updated will prevent this vulnerability from being exploited.