Mac Myth

The "myth" that apple computers are hard, if not impossible to be hacked is, in the words of the "Mythbusters", busted.

According to Infoworld:

A hacker managed to break into a Mac and win a $10,000 prize as part of a contest started at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.



In winning the contest, he exposed a hole in Safari, Apple's browser. "Currently, every copy of OS X out there now is vulnerable to this," said Sean Comeau, one of the organizers of CanSecWest.
The conference organizers decided to offer the contest in part to draw attention to possible security shortcomings in Macs. "You see a lot of people running OS X saying it's so secure, and frankly, Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has," said Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of security conferences including CanSecWest



Initially, contestants were invited to try to access one of two Macs through a wireless access point while the Macs had no programs running. No attackers managed to do so, and so conference organizers allowed participants to try to get in through the browser by sending URLs via e-mail.
Dino Dai Zovi, who lives in New York, sent along a URL that exposed the hole. Because the contest was only open to attendees in Vancouver, he sent it to a friend who was at the conference and forwarded it on.

Come to think of it, I have never ran across anyone actually trying to hack a Mac. Meh.

The URL opened a blank page but exposed a vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Comeau said. An attacker could use the vulnerability in a number of ways, but Dai Zovi used it to open a back door that gave him access to anything on the computer, Comeau said.



The vulnerability won't be published. 3Com's TippingPoint division, which put up the cash prize, will handle disclosing it to Apple.

And you know Apple is not going to let out vulnerability. Come on Apple we just want to know so we can gain more um knowledge, yeah knowledge. We have a right to etc... We don't want to expand the novice hacker's abilities worldwide or anything. We promise.

One reason Macs haven't been much of a target for hackers is that there are fewer to attack, said Terri Forslof, manager of security response for TippingPoint. "It's an incentive issue. The Mac is not as widely deployed of a platform as, say, Windows," she said. In this case, the cash may have provided motivation.

Plus everyone absolutley hates Micro$oft and they deserve our undying hatred. @#$% YOU!

You know come to think about it this isn't even a hack on the actual Mac OS. It's just exploiting a vulnerability in the OS's default web browser. And, come on, who doesn't use Firefox these days? If you don't you need to, really.

Ok that is all.

P.S. @#$% YOU Micro$oft!