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Apple users, for those not following the news lately the "security industry" is getting pissed off with a lot of things at late, new vista kernel protection (makes their job harder) but growingly apple lesser jihad types have been agrivating them. see http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/mac...9280374,00.htm
But thats okay, every OS has security flaws, because humans error, but the fans don't seam to get this. Then comes a rather intresting demonstration at the renouned security expo, wireless lan drivers having flaws which allow machine compramise. The researchers chose to demo this on an apple, because of the "Mac user base aura of smugness on security" now this seamed to enrage the religous types, so much so a blog appeared trying to condem everything as an elaborate lie.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/08/krebs_followup
this is so damn funny, he clearly shows little understanding of network devices, but he does have a passionate fire inside him. He completely overlooks one of the golden rules of cracking stuff, Copy and Compare. Generally speaking when toying with stuff, its very useful to have two to toy with, that way you get to play spot the difference. Demoing on an external card is probably because thats the first card they found it on. Also leaned on by apple.... yes how can a big wealthy company lean on someone lets see, first off when your doing EULA breaking thigns (which most security researchers are doing in some countries) you can get rather nasty law suites. I myself nearly got in a world of trouble with sony.... but thats another story, they can also just bribe you.
Fact is the headline Hack a Mac in 60 seconds, is just stupid. As it dosen't convey the attack vector, the method, or the simple fix (only keep ur wireless on when you need it on). The reasoning behind it, was no doubt people like John (author of blog linked) saying such things as "Mac’s sterling reputation for security" which is really laughable, as the simple message is:
No OS worth using could be thought of as impervious to attack.
I know many security researchers who have Macs, why because the threat their looking at is on an x86, a ppc mac theirfore has a good degree of seperation. That dosen't mean their more secure, it means they've got piss poor market penetration (with qutie good reason). I know even more secuirty researchers who use ACORN PCs, purely because these are pretty much un-heard of, so even more secure than apple, you've got very little chance of getting hijacked on one, even thou the kernel is about as secure as MS DOS.
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Originally Posted by awm
