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For those who think Macs are the most secure...
Hammyman
Posts: 9,913 Forumite
A warning to those who buy Macs on the basis that they're more secure....it was the first to fall at pwn2own and this was AFTER Apple had released two patches to fix 60 vulnerabilites on the day of the contest to make sure it wouldn't fall first, if at all.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/safarimacbook-first-to-fall-at-pwn2own-2011/8358
Safari/MacBook first to fall at Pwn2Own 2011
VANCOUVER — A team of security researchers from the French pen-testing firm VUPEN successfully exploited a zero-day flaw in Apple’s Safari browser to win this year’s Pwn2Own hacker challenge.
VUPEN co-founder Chaouki Bekrar lured a target MacBook to a specially rigged website and successfully launched a calculator on the compromised machine.
The hijacked machine was running a fully patched version of Mac OS X (64-bit).
In an interview with ZDNet, Bekrar said the vulnerability exists in WebKit, the open-source browser rendering engine. A three-man team of researchers spent about two weeks to find the vulnerability (using fuzzers) and writing a reliable exploit.
VUPEN won a $15,000 cash prize and an Apple MacBook Air 13″ running Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Bekrar said the Safari exploit was “somewhat difficult” because of the lack of documentation regarding 64-bit Mac OS X exploitation. ”We had to do everything from scratch. We had to create a debugging tool, create the shellcode and create the ROP (return oriented programming) technique,” he explained.
“The main difficulty was doing this on our own, without the help of any documentation,” he said.
He said the creation of a reliable exploit was “much more difficult” than finding the vulnerability.
“There are many WebKit vulnerabilities. You can run a fuzzer and get lots of good results. But it’s much more difficult to exploit it on x64 and to make your exploit very reliable,” he said.
Bekrar’s winning exploit did not even crash the browser after exploitation. Within five seconds of surfing to the rigged site, he successfully launched the calculator app and wrote a file on the disk without crashing the browser.
The exploit bypassed ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention), two key anti-exploit mitigations built into Mac OS X.
“The victim visits a web page, he gets owned. No other interaction is needed.”
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/safarimacbook-first-to-fall-at-pwn2own-2011/8358
Safari/MacBook first to fall at Pwn2Own 2011
VANCOUVER — A team of security researchers from the French pen-testing firm VUPEN successfully exploited a zero-day flaw in Apple’s Safari browser to win this year’s Pwn2Own hacker challenge.
VUPEN co-founder Chaouki Bekrar lured a target MacBook to a specially rigged website and successfully launched a calculator on the compromised machine.
The hijacked machine was running a fully patched version of Mac OS X (64-bit).
In an interview with ZDNet, Bekrar said the vulnerability exists in WebKit, the open-source browser rendering engine. A three-man team of researchers spent about two weeks to find the vulnerability (using fuzzers) and writing a reliable exploit.
VUPEN won a $15,000 cash prize and an Apple MacBook Air 13″ running Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Bekrar said the Safari exploit was “somewhat difficult” because of the lack of documentation regarding 64-bit Mac OS X exploitation. ”We had to do everything from scratch. We had to create a debugging tool, create the shellcode and create the ROP (return oriented programming) technique,” he explained.
“The main difficulty was doing this on our own, without the help of any documentation,” he said.
He said the creation of a reliable exploit was “much more difficult” than finding the vulnerability.
“There are many WebKit vulnerabilities. You can run a fuzzer and get lots of good results. But it’s much more difficult to exploit it on x64 and to make your exploit very reliable,” he said.
Bekrar’s winning exploit did not even crash the browser after exploitation. Within five seconds of surfing to the rigged site, he successfully launched the calculator app and wrote a file on the disk without crashing the browser.
The exploit bypassed ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention), two key anti-exploit mitigations built into Mac OS X.
“The victim visits a web page, he gets owned. No other interaction is needed.”
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Comments
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A warning to those who buy Macs on the basis that they're more secure....it was the first to fall at pwn2own and this was AFTER Apple had released two patches to fix 60 vulnerabilites on the day of the contest to make sure it wouldn't fall first, if at all.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/safarimacbook-first-to-fall-at-pwn2own-2011/8358
Safari/MacBook first to fall at Pwn2Own 2011
VANCOUVER — A team of security researchers from the French pen-testing firm VUPEN successfully exploited a zero-day flaw in Apple’s Safari browser to win this year’s Pwn2Own hacker challenge.
No OS is secure from zero-day exploits. By definition the vulnerability is unknown to anyone so there is no defence. It follows that a successful exploit of this sort does not reflect on the overall security designed and built into the LinWinMac OS.0 -
What? How do you come to that conclusion?JustPassingBy wrote: »It follows that a successful exploit of this sort does not reflect on the overall security designed and built into the LinWinMac OS.poppy100 -
What? How do you come to that conclusion?
The LinWinMac OS has a policy of responding to known security alerts within a week. It is hit by a zero-day exploit. In what way is its usual policy to be criticised or found to be wanting? (I'll remind you: zero-day exploits are unknown to the goodies).
The WinLinMac OS has a policy of responding to known security alerts within a month or three; no promises. It is hit by a zero-day exploit. In what way is its usual policy to be criticised or found to be wanting? You may not like its usual response time but how could it have dealt with something it had no knowledge of?0 -
What? How do you come to that conclusion?
Take what Mr Potkin says with a large bucket of salt. He suffers from delusions about security.....SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.1p1 anyone?
....cut....
I lost count of the security updates Ubuntu pushed out last week - but it certainly gave M$ a good pasting in quantity. As I type now there are additional issues with the kernel.
Quite apart from the described vulnerability in MacOS, a 2 minute scan of a random TalkTalk /24 finds this Mac user open to the world in seconds - aka 'a false sense of security'.139 OPEN at 78.148.x.x attempting to enumerate shares at xx.xx.xx.xx Domain=[CLIENT-MAC-MINI] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.28a-apple] Sharename Type Comment --------- ---- ------- AirDisk Disk AirDisk Clients Public Folder Disk xxxx Public Folder IPC$ IPC IPC Service (xxxx Mac mini) Deskjet 6980 Printer Server Comment --------- ------- Workgroup Master --------- ------- WORKGROUP CLIENT-MAC-MINIDon't believe the hype. LinMacNix is only safe in responsible hands, it can be quite dangerous in the wrong hands - no matter how much noise, smoke and mirrors you throw at it.0 -
Far more important than how secure the OS may be is how many different bits of malware there are in the wild designed to attack it and there is far more aimed at Windows than Linux or OS X
Of course there is another even more important factor and that is the person using the thing as has been recently demonstrated......0 -
Totally agree that Windows is the target of choice for your average malware writer - no doubt about it. But don't rule out the many vectors of attacking any system, and the relative false sense of security many *nix users suffer from.kwikbreaks wrote: »Far more important than how secure the OS may be is how many different bits of malware there are in the wild designed to attack it and there is far more aimed at Windows than Linux or OS X
Of course there is another even more important factor and that is the person using the thing as has been recently demonstrated......
The FIRST computer virus in the wild targeted Apple :-)A program called "Elk Cloner" was the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" — that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1981 by Richard Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.30 -
....cut....
That was probably the best thing you could have done. Indulging in phantasy is best confined to the privacy of one's own home.
Is that cause and effect? You type, the kernel degenerates?I lost count of the security updates Ubuntu pushed out last week - but it certainly gave M$ a good pasting in quantity. As I type now there are additional issues with the kernel.
Considering Ubuntu has over 25,000 packages on its books its not surprising there will be an update or two, all of which are published and checkable. Did you get lost when the count got over 5?
". . . ..open to the world". You mean like Google or the BBC? Love it. How do you expect communication to take place if interfaces are closed?Quite apart from the described vulnerability in MacOS, a 2 minute scan of a random TalkTalk /24 finds this Mac user in seconds - aka 'a false sense of security'.
And before I forget: you didn't even attempt to say why a 0-day exploit brings into question the whole security stance of any operating system.0 -
Is the moan here that linux (ubuntu) has more security updates than windows??? Why are you moaning about that? Surely thats a good thing. The majority of those updates are for programs running on the system rather than the operating system, programs that you have to manually update in windows, which many don't.
Only a windows user would moan about security updates!
AFAIK apple have always been bad with their updates, rather relying on their poor market share as protection.0 -
No, the last time I checked the thread was about: "For those who think Macs are the most secure..."Is the moan here that linux (ubuntu) has more security updates than windows??? .
.... but naturally it had forked into a general bun-fight over general 'My LinMacNix is better than your Windows' kind of affair.
No one disputes that updates are necessary - oh, except Brian who is running an old, out of date SSH daemon with documented CVE's on his hobby server - but hey, he likes it like that :rotfl:
Hell yeah! Couple that with flaky hardware and multiple triumphs of style over substance.....AFAIK apple have always been bad with their updates, rather relying on their poor market share as protection.
And no - I'm *not* a Windoze user - I consider that to be a serious insult.0 -
No, the last time I checked the thread was about: "For those who think Macs are the most secure..."
.... but naturally it had forked into a general bun-fight over general 'My LinMacNix is better than your Windows' kind of affair.
So that would be a yes then.:undecided What is LinMacNix?And no - I'm *not* a Windoze user - I consider that to be a serious insult.
Why? I don't see much wrong with windows now-a-days, other than some people don't seem to be able to use it properly.0
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