Style vs. Security for Macs
A Mac hacker (and self-confessed fanboy) says that Apple lags behind in security.
“I’m
a total Apple fanboy,” said security consultant Dino Dai Zovi during his
talk yesterday afternoon at the SOURCE
Boston computer-security conference. “If Apple made clothes, I’d
probably dress in them.”
But
part of being an Apple fanboy for Dai Zovi means hacking Macs, and he says that
OS X is often easier to hack than Vista or Linux.
Apple
enthusiasts often extol the security of the Mac operating system, and they rarely
run antivirus software. Dai Zovi agrees that Macs generally face less attack
from malware authors, but he said that’s not due to the impenetrability of OS X.
The Mac may be safer, but it’s not necessarily secure, he said, comparing the
situation to leaving your front door unlocked because there aren’t many thieves
in the neighborhood.
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Today,
about 10 percent of browsers run on OS X, so it’s just not profitable for
malware authors to go after Macs, Dai Zovi said. However, the situation could change
if Apple continues to gain market share.
In
his talk, Dai Zovi demonstrated an OS X attack that allowed him to take control of
the built-in camera on a MacBook. He also outlined several ways that attackers
could exploit flaws in OS X. For example, he said that many exploits require
attackers to locate data stored in a computer’s memory. Vista and Linux use randomization to make this
hard to do, and, while OS X does randomize some data, other
things are relatively easy for an attacker to find.
Dai
Zovi said that Apple has a chance to improve security with its forthcoming Snow
Leopard update to OS X. Without improved security, he worries that people may
start worming in to Apple’s computers. “Writing exploits for Vista is hard
work,” he said. “But writing exploits for Mac is fun.”
