"This vulnerability...does not require intricate knowledge of the processor or operating system to exploit," Masterbrook said today. "I discovered it accidentally, which indicates that this issue could also be discovered by others. These two factors should have indicated to Apple that this vulnerability carried a high risk."

He took Apple to task for the way it handles reports of security vulnerabilities, and patches its software. "It took seven months for Apple to patch this latest vulnerability in Safari, despite numerous opportunities for it to be addressed in updates that were already scheduled," he said. "OS X users are at this point in the unenviable situation of hoping that Apple starts taking these issues more seriously before phishing exploits, drive-by malware, and viruses become widespread on the platform."

Apple addressed the Safari flaw in both the , and in a that bumped up the browser to Version 3.2.2. While recent data puts Safari's overall browser usage share at 8.3%, the Windows edition accounted for a scant 0.3% last month, about a quarter the share of Google Inc.'s .

The company last patched Safari in November 2008, when it in less than two weeks to plug more than a dozen holes.

Other parts of Mac OS X that Apple patched today ranged from the Pixlet codec -- which contained a bug that could be triggered by a malformed movie file -- and the Folder Manager to the printing module and Remote Apple Events, which could be exploited to steal information.