Hacking News

Hack the Mac!

David Maynor explains how

By Alexandru Dumitru, Security News Editor

19th of September 2007, 10:13 GMT

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A way to take over a Mac has been disclosed a year ago, but published only this month after a non-disclosure agreement has ended. Many of you are curious about how a Mac can get hacked, so let me say it briefly: in 2006, at a black-hat conference in Las Vegas, David Maynor showed that

Apple's machines could be taken over by using a flaw in the system's wireless card. At that time, the vendors argued that the card is not default for Macs and that he can't prove what he just did and basically criticized the man. Then, about a month later, they discovered the bug themselves and fixed it. Or anyway, that's what they stated, since they didn't actually credit Maynor for anything.

In this month's issue of Uninformed[dot]org, which is an online hacking magazine, you can read all about his methods - how he did it, what he used to do it, basically, all the details. It describes how a hacker can run unauthorized software on a Mac after exploiting the vulnerability in the Apple AirPort wireless drivers.

You can read what David Maynor wrote by clicking on this link. Let me tell you that his paper is huge and you can't understand anything unless you are really really tech-savvy. Macs can't be hacked into that easily, the procedure this guy describes is meant for whiz kids, not for "Sunday hackers" that use state of the art "click-and-hack" malware. To help illustrate the process better, the paper is divided into chapters (now you can imagine how large it is) - it goes from the introduction and the vulnerability discovery through debugging the crash, getting code execution and it even has a conclusion and bibliography at the end. It's very complex and very well written, no wonder he had a no-disclosure agreement.

TAGS:

Mac | Apple | hack | wifi

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