How to win a MacBook Air
By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in Security on April 3, 2008 at 2:13 pm
1 Enter a competition run by Microsoft where the other computers on offer are a Sony Vaio running Vista or Fujitsu laptop running Linux, which apparently no-one seemed greatly interested in winning.
2. Three weeks before the competition try to break into a MacBook Air and on finding it secure, spend a week preparing what is rumoured to be a Java exploit in a web browser.
3. On the first day of the competition, continue trying to crack into the MacBook without success.
4. On the second day of the competition, go to your website where you have left the file you prepared in advance. Download the file and let it run on the computer. Surprise, surprise, you’ve gained access to the computer which you have just won and the $10,000 cash prize as well.
However, you did gain access. The guy trying to crack the Vista machine took another day and he used a Flash exploit to get in.
• Should Mac users be worried? No.
• Should we run anti-virus software? It wasn’t a virus that cracked the MacBook, although ClamXav is a free virus detector so it seems sensible to run it just in case.
• Should we turn the Firewall and security Preference Panes on? Yes, as well as router firewalls, and enable stealth mode too.
• Should Apple fix the problem? Definitely. They seem ready to dump Java as a default install and these Safari ‘glitches’ are becoming tiresome to read about.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Jacques Daviault - April 6, 2008 on 6:16 pm
I read about this… how they were able to hack into a Mac in 2 minutes, but most of the articles detailing the story leave out all the loopholes and caveats that accompany the real story. This was a case of social engineering… and this exploit, given it would have required a person to allow the hacker to have access to their computer in the first place, is highly unlikely to ever work in the wild. It’s a spurious story, at best. It’s just a non-news item dressed up like an old whore to look interesting, and touted as news mostly by anti-Mac propellor heads.
Comment by Mark Tennent - April 6, 2008 on 6:59 pm
Did I say that?
Blimey! Either I’m getting erudite or ITPro’s readers are.
No, That could never happen…could it?
Comment by Jacques Daviault - April 9, 2008 on 4:24 pm
Yes, you did say that.
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