How to mitigate Bash risk while waiting for a patch (sans a recompile)? This is related to How do I recompile Bash to avoid the remote exploit CVE-2014-6271 and CVE-2014-7169?, Are Macs vulnerable to the Bash shellshock bug? and Are Bash, Bourne, and Korn shells compiled into one binary in OSX?.

Apple has not released a patch for 10.8.5, and there's no telling if/when they will patch the defective software.

I don't want to download and compile a version of Bash because version headaches. For example, I might place a new copy in /usr/local/bin, but other software may be hardwired for Bash in /usr. Or I might replace /bin/bash and some unintended consequence might arise, like Apple refusing to update my version of Bash.

How does one mitigate the vulnerable without compiling and patching?
There is a patch for Mountain Lion, see http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1768.