Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

MacBook Hacked In Contest Via Zero-Day Hole in Safari

Posted by Zonk on Sat Apr 21, 2007 12:22 AM
from the and-the-winner-is dept.
Security Businesses Apple
EMB Numbers writes "Shane Macaulay just won a MacBook as a prize for successfully hacking OS X at CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC. The hack was based on a Safari vulnerability found by Dai Zovi and written in about 9 hours. CanSecWest organizers actually had to relax the contest rules to make the hack possible, because initially nobody at the event could breach the computers under the original restrictions. 'Dai Zovi plans to apply for a $10,000 bug bounty TippingPoint announced on Thursday if a previously unknown Apple bug was used. "Shane can have the laptop, I want the money," Dai Zovi said in a telephone interview from New York. TippingPoint runs the Zero Day Initiative bug bounty program.'"
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Mac Developer Mulls Zero-day Security Response 94 comments
1.6 Beta writes "Landon Fuller, the Mac programmer/Darwin developer behind the 'month of Apple fixes' project, plans to expand the initiative to roll out zero-day patches for issues that put Mac OS X users at risk of code execution attacks. The former engineer in Apple's BSD Technology Group has already shipped a fix for a nasty flaw in Java's GIF image decoder and hints an an auto-updating mechanism for the third-party patches. The article quotes him as saying, 'Perhaps [it could be] the Mac OS equivalent to ZERT,' referring to the Zero-day Emergency Response Team."
[+] $16,000 Bounty for Sendmail, Apache Zero-Day Flaws 173 comments
Famestay writes "Verisign's iDefense is putting up a $16,000 prize for any hacker who can find a remotely exploitable vulnerability in six critical Internet infrastructure applications. The bounty is for a zero-day code execution hole on the following Internet infrastructure technologies: Apache httpd, Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) daemon, Sendmail SMTP daemon, OpenSSH sshd, Microsoft Internet Information (IIS) Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. 'Immunity founder Dave Aitel, who also purchases flaws and exploits for use in the CANVAS pen testing tool, says its doubtful iDefense will get any submissions from hackers. "It's very hard to exploit [those listed applications]," Aitel said. "IIS 6 hasn't had a public remotely exploitable bug in it. Ever." Several other hackers I spoke to had very much the same message, arguing that $16,000 can never equate to the amount of work/expertise required to find and exploit a hole in the six targeted technologies.'"
[+] Apple: MacBook Air First To Be Compromised In Hacking Contest 493 comments
Multiple readers have written to let us know that the MacBook Air was the first laptop to fall in the CanSecWest hacking contest. The successful hijacking took place only two minutes into the second day of the competition, after the rules had been relaxed to allow the visiting of websites and opening of emails. The TippingPoint blog reveals that the vulnerability was located within Safari, but they won't release specific details until Apple has had a chance to correct the problem. The winner, Charlie Miller, gets to keep the laptop and $10,000. We covered the contest last year, and the results were similar.
[+] Last Year's CanSecWest Winner Repeats on Vista, Ubuntu Wins 337 comments
DimitryGH followed up on the earlier news that the MacBook Air lost CanSecWest by noting that "Last year's winner of the CanSecWest hacking contest has won the Vista laptop in this year's competition. According to the sponsor TippingPoint's blog, Shane Macaulay used a new 0day exploit against Adobe Flash in order to secure his win. At the end of the day, the only laptop (of OS X, Vista, and Ubuntu) that remained unharmed was the one running Ubuntu. How's that for fueling religious platform wars?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

MacBook Hacked In Contest Via Zero-Day Hole in Safari 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • switcher (Score:5, Funny)

    by BorgCopyeditor (590345) on Saturday April 21 2007, @12:25AM (#18821365)
    that's it! I'm switching back to Windows!

    • Explanatin of rules relaxation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Overly Critical Guy (663429) on Saturday April 21 2007, @11:10AM (#18824335)

      CanSecWest organizers actually had to relax the contest rules to make the hack possible, because initially nobody at the event could breach the computers under the original restrictions.


      In other words, nobody was able to remotely hack the machine, so they allowed for local exploits, which someone used in a Safari URL.

      Expect Apple-haters and other FUDmeisters to completely ignore the difference, like InfoWorld did yesterday in their breathless headline about "remotely breaking in."

      • Re:Explanatin of rules relaxation (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DECS (891519) on Saturday April 21 2007, @01:14PM (#18825307) Homepage Journal
        InfoWorld Publishes False Report on Mac Security [roughlydrafted.com]

        "Nancy Gohring, writing for InfoWorld, delivered a misleading report yesterday on a Mac security exploit contest held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC.

        "In her defense, it appears likely that Gohring did not write the headline for her InfoWorld article, which described the contest winner as being "able to remotely break into a Mac as part of a contest designed to illustrate security flaws in OS X." That part was simply wrong.

        "Whoever did write the headline must have been smoking weed in celebration of 4/20, because Gohring's article clearly described a local exploit. There's a big difference between the remote exploits that made Windows infamous for its insecurity and a local exploit of an application."

        More info under a series of subheadings:

        Gohring's Mac Security Myths
        Microsoft's Security Embarrassment
        Mac OS X and Security
        The Mac Minority Malware Myth
        Why Macs Aren't Sending You Spam

  • So, if I reaf TFA correctly: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noewun (591275) on Saturday April 21 2007, @12:29AM (#18821397) Journal
    The machine couldn't be hacked, so they relaxed the rules so it could be? I wish they'd been more explicit as to what 'relaxing the rules' meant. But maybe that would've spoiled the story.

    • Re:So, if I reaf TFA correctly: (Score:5, Informative)

      by richdun (672214) on Saturday April 21 2007, @12:39AM (#18821435)
      If I recall correctly, originally the requirement was remote access, but when that went nowhere, they allowed entrants to submit URLs that would be navigated to via Safari. Check out Engadget for more details...

    • Re:So, if I reaf TFA correctly: (Score:5, Informative)

      by RalphBNumbers (655475) on Saturday April 21 2007, @12:42AM (#18821449)
      As I understand it:

      The rules originally required getting a user shell on a macbook connected to a wireless router without any other access, or getting a root shell under the same conditions on a second macbook without using the same bug.
      The prize was the macbook(s) you hacked.

      But they decided not enough people were interested, so 3Com added a $10,000 bounty for a winning bug.

      But no one could crack it, so they set the machine up to visit malicious web pages submitted by email.

      Then someone found a bug in Safari, and successfully crafted a webpage to exploit it to get user shell access.

      • Admin user or regular user? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by goombah99 (560566) on Saturday April 21 2007, @01:44AM (#18821741)
        I wish they would say if the user that safari was running under was admin or regular. If it was admin then this is even less of a hack than it already is. Also I wonder if they disabled the safari feature to automatically "open safe files after downloading". That option puts a lot of trust in other programs not to have holes. indeed it's not really safe at all. Only stupid people or people that don't do stupid things leave it on.

        Bottom line no remote hacks.

        • Re:Admin user or regular user? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Tickletaint (1088359) on Saturday April 21 2007, @05:52AM (#18822539) Journal
          From one Mac user to (presumably) another, please get your head out of the sand. These "stupid people" to whom you refer you might otherwise know as "The Rest of Us." It doesn't matter how technically competent you are, we are all "stupid" every now and then—or do you only ever visit the same two or three well-known sites every day? Even if you do, how can you be sure they haven't been compromised by, say, some sort of injection attack? Or even by an unscrupulous advertiser in an iframe?

          And why on earth does it make a difference whether the user account was admin or regular? If an intruder has access to your personal documents, you're just as fucked either way.
          • because you can encrypt your personal documents, and if many users are on it only one of them gets hit.

            However, if someone has access to root, they can do a lot more malicous things. bots, keloggers, etc...

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Tickletaint (1088359)
              (1) FileVault won't help you here, since an intruder gaining Safari's privileges (e.g.) has access to everything Safari has access to, namely, your entire home directory. Besides, do you encrypt your entire home directory?

              (2) You don't need root to launch an application (like a bot) or even install a keylogger (suid isn't set for KeyboardViewerServer, for example).
          • Third thing I did on both my macs (After dragging terminal to the dock and the MS demo apps to the trash can) was download and install Firefox for OSX. Not that I'd let my guard down because of that.

            Hmm... the way Apple packages apps it'd be pretty easy, I think, to run the web browser in a chroot jail. You can probably still get out of a chroot jail but it'd make compromising anything important on the system that much harder.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Tickletaint (1088359)
          Interesting that your sig:

          You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?

          skewers that very behavior of Safari you describe [third-design.net]. Of course, if you have "open safe files after downloading" turned off, it's even more obnoxious—you have to find the file on your desktop and open it manually. Exactly the sort of repetitive task I thought my computer should be doing on my behalf.

          • ...you have to find the file on your desktop and open it manually. Exactly the sort of repetitive task I thought my computer should be doing on my behalf.

            Or you could double-click on the file's icon in the Safari downloads window. If you really want to examine it in the Finder, then you can click on the magnifying glass icon to view it.

            Exactly the sort of task your computer does on your behalf :-)

              • I'm not exactly sure what the default settings are like, because honestly it's been years since I've used a Mac that was in its out-of-the-box, default state, but the way I have it right now, the only warning I get is when I'm about to open an application that's never been run before.

                This, IMO, is a Good Thing. It's only a half a second delay when I really do want it to launch a new application, and it's a nice heads-up that the computer is doing something that I've never done with it before. More than once

    • Re:So, if I reaf TFA correctly: (Score:5, Informative)

      by Phil246 (803464) on Saturday April 21 2007, @12:46AM (#18821477)
      The Register is a little more informative in that regard, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/20/pwn-2-own_ winner/ [theregister.co.uk]

      The pwn-2-own contest got off to a slow start on Thursday. The rules originally mandated an exploit that required no action on the part of the user. The reward for a successful hack was the machine that had been compromised. Conference attendees were underwhelmed, reasoning a Mac exploit that required no end-user interaction could be sold for upwards of $20,000. Things changed significantly on Day 2. That's when Tipping Point upped the ante with its promise of a $10,000 bounty. Contest organizers also relaxed the rules so exploits could include malicious websites that attacked Safari.

      • no such thing as a white hat... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Animaether (411575) on Saturday April 21 2007, @03:47AM (#18822115) Journal
        ...is there?

        I mean - I can only assume this was a 'white hat' hackers conference, given there was actual publicity given and a public bounty and such. But then things like these pop up?

        "'Shane can have the laptop, I want the money,' Dai Zovi said in a telephone interview from New York"
        "Conference attendees were underwhelmed, reasoning a Mac exploit that required no end-user interaction could be sold for upwards of $20,000."


        Makes me think.. black hat, white hat.. what's the difference these days? I thought a white hat hacker was the 'good guy' (albeit still a hacker).. the kind of person who hacks for fun / curiosity.. the kind of person who notifies the developer of the bug or, at least, just makes the bug known to the world at no charge. Not the kind of person who hacks, then scours the 'security conferences' for a bounty, and when that bounty is lower than what they could get off of actual 'bad guys', complain that the bounty is too low. To me, that just sounds like the person is a black hat, but dons a white hat on top in an attempt to fool us into thinking they're white hat.

        • Okay, maybe a black hat tendency, but there might be alternatives.

          There are plenty of security companies out there legitimately trying to sell their software, plenty of people who would love to be the only ones who have a defense against some secret hack. If you want me to spend time finding a vulnerability and then into writing an exploit, my time would not come cheap. I'm not even talented in that direction. Imagine that you're a security researcher who gets paid for your time investigating and resolving potential security breaches, what kind of payoff makes it worth investing your time in that gamble? It has to be a pretty penny or else you're better served doing what you do for a living.

          "Give me the money" is a legit response when you've invested your time and effort into something with that as your goal. If he'd said "I don't hack for fun or evil, I only did this for the contest and expect to be given what I was promised" then I don't think you'd have the same take. There is a good chance that is exactly what he meant too. You might be shocked to learn that a lot of us who are considered computer geeks are not the world's foremost verbal communicators.

          I love my job, but I won't work here long after they stop paying me.

          • "You might be shocked to learn that a lot of us who are considered computer geeks are not the world's foremost verbal communicators."

            Well, only if you disregard grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.
    • Relaxed rules = they gave out the root password and let them sit at the keyboard for a while.

    • I wish they'd been more explicit as to what 'relaxing the rules' meant. But maybe that would've spoiled the story.

      They allowed user activity, aka he browsed to a site he created for the purpose. It seems this is not a full auto worm type exploit of the kind common in the Windoze world. See here [theregister.co.uk]. It's hard to say if the problem was javascript of something like Flash called by it.

      All the M$ tools are going to be underlining their popularity arguments and slinging mud at all the more secure OS. Even

            • If you're talking about Vista, maybe it makes more sense from their perspective to sit on the exploits until Vista is more widespread, if they can keep a secret that long.
                • Is greater market share the only reason penetration of a system is attempted? No, of course it's not; but a vulnerable system with greater market is more appealing when planning a malicious attack.

                  Notoriety is pretty low down on a penetration expert's priorities, especially if he's targeting Windows (imagine the headline: "Shock! Horror! Windows MAY be vulnerable!") Even in the case of this competition, I'd be surprised if any of the entrants believed they would gain fame/infamy outside a niche maligned

                  • Marketshare has a significant role in the success of a virus. If a virus is going to be rejected by 95% of the computers it hits, frequently (such as with e-mailed viruses) in some way that draws attention to the issue on the computers it fails, it's likely to be detected far earlier and stamped out than if it is rejected by only 5% of the computers.

                    In other words: One of the reasons its so difficult to write a virus for Mac OS X is that it would have immense difficulty finding other Macs to spread to.

                • To the asshole that follows me around modding all my posts down: Keep wasting your mod point shithead. I've got more Karma than you'll ever have mod-points.

                  It's actually a swarm of mod-bots doing it.

            • Smarter botnet herders may protect their zero-day exploits and use them sparingly, as you suggest. Within the past year, more than once, zero day exploits were discovered in the wild by security researchers. In one case the exploit discovered was apparently directed at a single user in a U.S. Federal government agency, suggesting that at least some of them do just that.

              In my expeience, managers of large organizations do not take Zero Day risks seriously, and often don't really understand them. The ris

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by biftek (145375)
      The intent was always that the rules would be progressively relaxed - see http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/142/464216/30 /0/threaded [securityfocus.com] from last month.

  • Konqueror (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21 2007, @12:40AM (#18821437)
    Safari's rendering engine is based on KHTML. So is Konqueror affected by this flaw as well?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Fooker (656693)
      Thats a good question. There's a good chance it could be. Then again with the speed that updates/patch's/fix's come out for Linux, if it does it'll be fixed in a relatively short time.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tickletaint (1088359)
        Why say "Linux" rather than open source? KHTML has nothing to do with Linux. Anyway, from what I've been reading, it seems more likely related to a bug in JavaScriptCore [webkit.org], derived from KJS and which is also open source.

        By the way—

        updates/patch's/fix's
        Should be "update's," for consistency.
    • Safari's rendering engine is based on KHTML. So is Konqueror affected by this flaw as well?

      It could be, though IIRC most of the past security holes have only affected one and not the other, for some reason.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 (641858)
        WebKit was forked from KHTML and developed internally at Apple for about a year before Safari was released. Then the patches were all sent back in one big lump. During this time, the KHTML team cleaned up the code a lot, and had to go to a lot of effort to re-import all of the WebKit patches (some weren't needed, since the same functionality had been re-imported). This continued in the run-up to OS X 10.4, where large blobs of patches were released in one go, making it very hard for the KHTML team to kee
    • Wonder then if the flaw is fixed in latest Konquerer, that Webkit is also safe. I'm using Webkit and its a whole lot faster than Safari so I'm using it almost exclusively.

  • Read a better article than the one linked. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21 2007, @01:38AM (#18821711)
    The MacBook was actually only hacked because they lessened the rules and actually had someone open Safari and use a malicious website. No ports were closed nor was the firewall running.

  • This seems a little sensationalized... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rod76 (705840) on Saturday April 21 2007, @01:40AM (#18821723)
    I'm a Mac user and as such I'm not claiming invincibility although the "Unix" like foundation makes me more secure its still the end user's responsibility to not run as admin or God forbid root. Not to mention using a good firewall or correctly configuring the one that's already built in is vital and just practicing caution on the web. That aside I just don't think this is entirely honest, I wish they would disclose all the variables involved to include all settings used. But as others here have said considering Apples foresight using open source means the between Apple and the Konqueror devs this will be quickly addressed. But my gut feeling here is that something stinks in Denmark!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tickletaint (1088359)
      You don't need root to rm -rf ~.

      Or to osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to send contents of folder "~" to everyone in Address Book'.
    • From the article it appears they used the default settings that came with the machine. They later allowed people to send them URLs that they would load into Safari. It sounds like the reason they did not release the settings used was to keep this exploit contained, and that they will provide the settings to Apple.
      I have been a dedicated mac user for more than 10 years, but I find it ludicrous that people believe that macos is invulnerable or any discovered exploits must be fake.
  • As a longtime Mac user and a fan of Apple products in general, I'd like to congratulate the winner of this contest. Too many Mac users now seem lost in willful ignorance of the fact that tasteful, thoughtful design alone doesn't render a system bulletproof. Thus, I applaud any honest efforts to increase the public awareness that yes, shit-happening potential exists, even on a Mac.

    (I said honest efforts. That guy who claimed the AirPort hack is still a raging tool.)

    Another point to emphasize—and which,

  • there are some weird things in Safari... (Score:5, Informative)

    by lixlpixel (747466) on Saturday April 21 2007, @10:34AM (#18824043) Homepage Journal

    Safari lets you include local files, for example...

    i told apple (and got a lame reply that it would be fixed eventually) month ago, yet it still works.

    see http://destabili.zation.eu/ [zation.eu] for a quick harmless example that can check what applications you got installed.

    and then there is a way to crash Safari which exists for more than a year - again i had an email conversation where they wanted more info and crashreports - yet nothing was ever done about it.

    http://lixlpixel.org/safaricrash/ [lixlpixel.org] and follow the instructions - but make sure you don't have any important tabs open...

    • Wow, those are very serious bugs. A website could include items out of your cache, then post the contents back to itself. Or it could run a local DoS by including /dev/tty. This class of bugs was reported in Mozilla way back in 2001 and fixed in various stages most recently in 2004. That WebKit doesn't recognize the severity of this problem says a lot about that project.

  • What I want to know (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HairyCanary (688865) on Saturday April 21 2007, @10:37AM (#18824073)
    How was the machine configured relative to an off-the-shelf OSX installation?

    While I understand that for the purposes of the contest it might have been necessary to reduce those protections, I think that before something becomes "news" we should know what the real risk is.

    Does this hack require the user to manually disable protections the OS ships with, or manually enable services that default to off? The article seems light on detail.
    • Yes, it's several hundred dollars worth of hardware. I can still find uses for old Pentium one machines for running a network raid drive.
    • What does Firefox have to do with it? I hope you are not saying that IE AND Firefox are equally responsible for the security problems under Windows...
    • > I get anoyed at people saying how secure OS-X is or Linux or what ever.

      Why do you get annoyed? Does it make you feel inferior or something?

      Here's a quick lesson: learn to ignore it and get on with your life. If you don't have the time figure out Linux, or you don't have the money to spend on a Mac, no-one will begrudge you that. Just be proud with what you have and don't let anyone get you down. Seriously, it's not worth getting annoyed over.
    • I don't let my choice of operating system lull me into a false sense of security. I just enjoy being able to use my system without living in a constant state of fear.

      My room mate's windows box stopped talking to the network again last night. She's got at least three or four different security or anti-spyware applications running on that thing. She just upgraded one of them and it apparently conflicted with another one and so her network stopped working. First thing out of my mouth when she tells me this i

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Normally we make fun of Slashdot editors for not being able to spell simple English terms familiar to a mass audience correctly. They loose there audience when they do that. Usually they can get their terms of art correct. Not this time. (Not a sentence)

      Guys, it's spelled "0day", and it has been since before you l33ch3d Karateka on a catfur. Do have some sense of perspective. (Question mark?)

      See me.

      • They loose there audience when they do that.

        [...]See me.


        I can't believe my TAs for Intermediate Slashdot Trolling For The Playstation Generation are actually deducting points for such an accurate depiction of them.
          • Don't forget to remind the editors to tighten up there spellud.

            You've got an excuse for "Spelled/Spelt" but what about everything else? When you're slamming the editors for misspelling common simple words, and in your post you do the exact same thing.

            I think you should step away from the keyboard and reevaluate your life.
    • Normally we make fun of Slashdot editors for not being able to spell simple English terms familiar to a mass audience correctly. They loose there audience...
      • Oddly enough, the distinction isn't so fine as you make it sound.

        http://dict.die.net/hacker/ [die.net]

        2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who
        enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about
        programming.

        8. (Deprecated) A malicious meddler who tries to discover
        sensitive information by poking around. Hence "password
        hacker", "network hacker". The correct term is cracker.

        http://dict.die.net/cracker/ [die.net]

        jargon An individual who attempts to gain unauthorised
        access to a computer system. These individuals are often
        malicious and have many means at their disposal for breaking
        into a system.

        While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some
        playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques,
        anyone past larval stage is expected to have outgrown the
        desire to do so except for immediate practical reasons (for
        example, if it's necessary to get around some security in
        order to get some work done).

        So while most hackers are crackers, most crackers are not hackers. (Sort of like 'all panthers are cats, but not all cats are panthers.')

    • It is a fallacy, because it would mean that OSX was developed with the same people whodeveloped Windows. USed the same management team, and made all the same decesions. None of which is true.

      They're different, so you can't compare them like that.

      Also, it is very obvious that if someone did find an exploit, they would be on the front page of every geek site on the web. So anyone doing it for ego would spend all their time trying to break OSX in some meaningfull way, which this wasn't.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.