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[JimH]

Mac attacked and compromised in 30 minutes.

From news.com:

Gaining root access to a Mac is "easy pickings," according to an individual who won an OS X hacking challenge last month by gaining root control of a machine using an unpublished security vulnerability.

On Feb. 22, the Sweden-based Mac enthusiast set up his Mac Mini as a server and invited hackers to break through the computer's security and gain root control, which would allow the attacker to take charge of the computer and delete files and folders or install applications.

Within hours of going live, the "rm-my-mac" competition was over. The challenger posted this message on his Web site: "This sucks. Six hours later, this poor little Mac was owned, and this page got defaced."

The hacker who won the challenge, who asked ZDNet Australia to identify him only as "Gwerdna," said he gained root control of the Mac in less than 30 minutes.

Full article:
http://news.com.com/Mac+OS+X+hacked+in+less+than+30+minutes/2100-1002_3-6046197.html?tag=nefd.top

[Pink Waters]

Yeah I heard about that,... but i think the thing is too specific; which means that maybe related to the new intel duo core frame and the modefied os tiger...

its the first steps of apple over intel processors...
but as for my knowlage apple is more solid than pc based computer and this is an exception of the current moment that won't be available afterwards...

I am very excited towards the next mac generations though.

[Mr ChriZ]

A friend who went to some computer show recently was
telling me Microsoft UK have sent all there softee's back for retraining
in creating secure code.  Apparently from now on anyone that
writes non secure stuff for them will get a tick next to there name.
3 Ticks, and it's goodbye...

They are also using some software which scans through and identify's
potential security holes.

[glynor]

While OSX is generally more secure than Windows XP, this is mostly attributable to it's FreeBSD underpinnings rather than a maniacal devotion to security at Apple HQ.  Aside from that inherant superiority, the main thing that keeps Apple with the "more-secure" mistique is simply market share.

It all really comes down to this:

You are an evil black-hat hacker determined to write a virus to cripple worldwide computer networks, or actually more commonly a script kiddie+2 who intends to create a trojan to create a botnet of zombie machines of epic porportions (which you will then sell off to the highest bidder).  When doing this, you must first decide for what platform you will code your nefarious creation.  Your choices are:

a) Win32:  Where you will have the opportunity to infect millions upon millions of machines worldwide, with the potential to cripple economies and national infrastructure (all of which definitely qualifies for a coolness +5 factor).

b) MacOSX:  You will have the potential to infect a few million machines in a growing market segment, but the damage will be limited mostly to home users, graphic artists, and some scientists.  Most businesses will not be affected, and the government (with the exception of the above-mentioned scientists) will probably not take note.  Plus, because of the lack of a devoted virus-writing community you will need to do it all on your own, with only limited "prior-art" to go on.  And, to top it off, some of the built-in security of the OS will make it a bit more difficult to accomplish your goal with elegant code.  All of this adds up to a coolness modifier of -2.

c) Linux/Unix:  This last category is the least appealing really.  Here your opportunities for infection are very limited.  Not only are there relatively few *NIX boxes out there to infect (though if you count servers probably more than there are Macs), the users of those boxes probably display a higher level of sophistication on average.  This makes it difficult to exploit security holes discovered eons ago (as is so often the case with Windows infections), as the potential host machines get patched quickly.  Also, while there is plenty of information out there to go on when building your Linux malware, if you are successful and do develop and deploy a devastating piece of code you will earn the scorn of a large community of dedicated hackers who are probably quite a bit more sophisticated than you are.  They will then make it their life's mission to hunt you down and expose you.

Once you think about these factors, it's easy to see why there is more malware out there for Win32 machines.  The good thing about all of this for Apple is that the fact that anyone cares about these things is because they are gaining market share hand over fist.  The truth of the matter is that the average OSX install is far more secure than the average Win32 install for a whole host of reasons (not all of which are about technology), but neither is bulletproof.  If you think you are invincible, you're probably already compromized.

[Mr ChriZ]

You forgot to mention to hack into one of these systems
in the first place you're probably an uber nerd.  To be
seen using Windows would be -5 cool points and Mac -3 Points.
Linux is the only way for you.  Giving yourself a home goal and hacking
into a linux system (although technicallly challenging) is a major -10 cool points,
plus the worry of being nailed to a cross by your Linux Advocate buddies,
while they go fix it. 

[bob]

The other thing about hacking OSX (until a month ago) or a non-intel Linux box is that you are going to have to find or write some PPC assembly to take control on your buffer overflow (which is the most common way of getting in). There aren't a lot of people out there that can handle that. From first hand experience with lots of different assemblers, I can say that PPC assembly is the 2nd most unusual I've seen (most odd was the Ti 99/4).

That said, there is still damage that can be done even on machines with non-intel processors if the software is not kept up to date. Certain forum softwares and Mysql come to mind...

[hsc]

Mac attacked and compromised in 30 minutes.

The hacker who won the challenge, who asked ZDNet Australia to identify him only as "Gwerdna," said he gained root control of the Mac in less than 30 minutes.

Even more OT: When I remember correctly werdna (Andrew backwards) was one of the evil Wizards in the Wizardry RPG series.

[glynor]

(most odd was the Ti 99/4).

Nice!  I had one of these when I was much, much younger.



Just like that one, with the voice synthesizer and everything.  We even had the "tape drive" which was just a standard tape recorder with some sort of weird analog interface with the computer.  (Actually, the tape player far outlasted the computer's usefulness.)  That thing was great though, it's where I first learned BASIC.

As far as the parent topic.  Ars Technica has an interesting write up on the "hacking".  While OSX certainly does have signifigant unfixed vulnerabilities (as do all of the major OSes), it appears that this test wasn't entirely realistic (or at least, not what most people think it is).

Firstly, the hack was that of privilege escalation, not a pure remote exploit. The web site author had enabled SSH, the Unix "Secure Shell" tool that has replaced telnet as a means for accessing networked machines from the command line. He then configured an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) database and added a web-based interface so that visitors to the site could add their own shell accounts to the system. These shell accounts were given limited user access, so in theory they should not have been able to access or modify any files that were owned by the system or by other accounts. The hacker used a vulnerability in OS X to promote the privileges of this account, thus "gaining root" and becoming able to modify any file on the computer at will.

Needless to say, most web servers are not set up with the ability to give out free shell accounts to anyone who wants one. SSH is not even enabled by default on OS X, although server administrators can choose to do so if they wish. So the "hacking" contest was not very indicative of the security of an OS X computer, even a web server, that is set up open to the Internet. However, this does not mean that the contest was of no significance whatsoever.

Oh, and that reminds me...

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade