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Adam Engst 11 comments

Safari 16.5.2

Apple has released Safari 16.5.2 for macOS 12 Monterey and macOS 11 Big Sur to fix a WebKit vulnerability addressed in recent updates to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS (see “Rapid Security Responses for iOS/iPadOS 16.5.1 (c) and macOS Ventura 13.4.1 (c),” 13 July 2023). Although Apple had to pull and then rerelease the Rapid Security Responses due to website loading problems caused by the 16.5.2 (a) version number in Safari’s user agent identifier, this version of Safari seems to have sidestepped those issues because it never included the problematic (a). We recommend updating right away. You can download Safari 16.5.2 only via Software Update. (Free, release notes, macOS 11+)

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Comments About Safari 16.5.2

Notable Replies

  1. Hold off on installing this update for now. It seems to have website loading issues similar to those experienced by Safari 16.5.2 (a) running on a device patched with the recent Rapid Security Response updates. Apple will undoubtedly release a new version soon.

  2. Can someone who’s running Monterey and has installed this update confirm whether or not it’s working with Facebook and Instagram? It’s not in my virtual machine, but since it seems the problem with 16.5.2 (a) in Ventura was related to the user agent string, this version shouldn’t have suffered from the problem.

  3. blm

    I’m running Monterey and have Safari 16.5.2 (17615.2.9.101.1, 17615) installed. Facebook seems to work fine (I hardly ever use it, but I could log in and the site seems like the normal desktop site). However, Instagram gives me “Sorry, this page isn’t available.” for even the Log In page. I can log into Instagram in Firefox just fine, so not sure what that means.

  4. blm

    Well, hmmm. I also happen to have a Monterey VM (my report above is on a native install of Monterey). The VM hadn’t been updated, so was running Safari 16.5.1 (17615.2.9.11.7, 17615). I could log in to Facebook fine, but I got a different page not found error on the Instagram login page. I then updated to Safari 16.5.2 (17615.2.9.101.1, 17615). I could still log in to Facebook and it looks the same as with Safari 16.5.1. But now I could log in to Instagram, unlike my native Monterey install with the same version of Safari. So Facebook works with both my Monterey installs with Safari 16.5.2. Instagram works with only the VM. :man_shrugging:

  5. Too weird! For me, Facebook and Instagram don’t work in the VM, Instagram doesn’t work on my 2020 iMac with 16.5.2 (a) or 16.5.2, and both work on my M1 MacBook Air with 16.5.1 (a) and 16.5.2.

  6. I’m running Monterey 12.6.7. On Monday 7/10 I got the security update that I installed, Version 16.5.2 (17615.2.9.101.1, 17615) at 9:28 PM. Ever since then I can’t load over 90% of my web pages (CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Appleinsider, 9to5Mac, Rotten Tomatoes, etc). The webpages draw then in a few seconds they draw again then a few seconds later they try to redraw but get a gray screen with an error message in the middle saying "A problem repeatedly occurred with “URL” and a button that says “Reload Webpage”. Safari also shows in the Finder under Date Modified 7/10/23, 9:28 PM.

  7. That almost sounds like you’re hitting repeated redirects and eventually failing. I’m not sure what could cause it, but do you have any odd DNS setups?

  8. Im not quite sure what you mean by an old DNS setup.
    I talked to Apple last night and the suggested I reinstall Monterey or upgrade to Ventura. Then I saw today that there’s a new dot release for Monterey in beta so I might wait for it and see if it fixes things.

  9. “Odd” DNS setup. :-) Could you be relying on unusual DNS servers that could be failing lookups in strange ways? You’d know—most people never tweak their DNS settings in the Network settings pane.

  10. I’m just using my Comcast DNS server look ups. I’ll check tonight if they were changed.

    Thanks
    Mike Retondo

  11. Safari redirects is fixed. I hoped it would be fixed when Apple released 12.6.8 the other day, but it wasn’t. I logged in tonight to try more diagnostics, so I started Safari, and the problem was still occurring as expected. Then OpenCore-Patcher popped up telling me there was an update, I was one version older. So I updated as usual and afterward, Safari was fixed. Nothing in the log fixes mentioned Safari but hey I’ll take the win!

    Thanks for your help

    Mike Retondo

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