How to hack a mac..

[TheAnimus]

If you have physical access to the machine you're interested in, the world is already your oyster.

The concern for me is not the security of such a system, rather the damage an unsavvy user could unwittingly cause.

If you've got physical access, couldn't you just slave up the HDD to another Mac? Then it wouldn't leave any traces!

EDIT: 1,000 posts wooooot! Ooo I feel old...

you boys want to have a play with some real cheap hardware that would thwart your efforts?

my rather old toshiba tecra m4 is using TPM. Try it punks!

This is once again why i find apple just lackign in the innovation department and doing nothing in secruity, if they had a userbase of even 5% they wouldn't look so rosey.

[TheAnimus]

But do you trust your TPM?

Ok, little wager?

£50 says you couldn't get to a txt file on the root of my HDD, given say the time of the next hexus london meet. (hasen to add, this is only on the TPM'd tecra m4, not my other easy pickings PCs)

it would be far easyer to find some bug in windows or one of the services running than use the physical access you have?

[aidanjt]

If I was a betting man, my money would be on the backdoor way around.

[peterb]

Slightly OT, but I have just logged nearly 70,000 (failed) attempts (in one night) to hack into my (linux) computer via SSH. (all from a couple of Russian based IP addresses)

[TheAnimus]

I have noticed the amount of russian/chinease IPs targetting my network lately, it used to be europian and USA botnets. But i can't help get the impression, these are often not botnets now, because rather htan ports 0-100 been one ip 100-200 another ip etc. Its all one host!

Disconnect the commies i say!

[directhex]

korea's the biggest one targeting our networks

[Phil_P]

of course, simply typing "passwd $USERNAME" once you're into a root console would be *far* too complex. no, you have to delete random files & load the first-run wizard. obviously.

I wondered that too - once you have root access, just reset the password

The whole point about this is that you need physical access to the machine - something 99.9% of hackers don't have. Simple solution - lock the door!

[charleski]

you boys want to have a play with some real cheap hardware that would thwart your efforts?

my rather old toshiba tecra m4 is using TPM. Try it punks!

This is once again why i find apple just lackign in the innovation department and doing nothing in secruity, if they had a userbase of even 5% they wouldn't look so rosey.

Uh... You can turn on file encryption in OSX if you want protection from physical attacks. All Intel macs have a TPM module.

[badass]

I'm a complete non fan of OSX but dont see this as any kind of a problem.

IIRC If you boot a Windows XP machine off a Windows 2000 CD based recovery console it doesn't ask for a password to allow you access. You can then do lots of damage from there.

[TheAnimus]

Uh... You can turn on file encryption in OSX if you want protection from physical attacks. All Intel macs have a TPM module.

only lacking a vendor supported device driver, for something that can instantly screw up your whole system. Niice.

[charleski]

only lacking a vendor supported device driver, for something that can instantly screw up your whole system. Niice.

I've no interest in getting into a fanboy debate .
If you want to protect your data from people who might have physical access to your machine, you need to use encryption, and that applies to all OSs.