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Mac Worm Author Gets Death Threats
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jul 19, 2007 07:48 AM
from the stranger-and-stranger dept.
from the stranger-and-stranger dept.
StonyandCher write(s) to spread news about the strange story of the reported Apple OS X worm, which is growing stranger by the day. The blog of the researcher who claimed to have created the malware reportedly received death threats. The blog was then hijacked, according to the researcher, who calls him/herself InfoSec Sellout. InfoSec blamed David Maynor for hacking the blog. For his part, Maynor apparently unmasked himself as "LMH" and InfoSec as Jon Ramsey. The post to the Fuzzing mailing list has not been independently confirmed.
Update: 07/19 13:48 GMT by KD : David Maynor wrote in and denies that he is LMH.
Update: 07/19 13:48 GMT by KD : David Maynor wrote in and denies that he is LMH.
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Worm Claimed For Apple OS X 398 comments
SkiifGeek writes "Controversy is slowly building over the development of a claimed new worm that targets OS X systems, dubbed by its inventor Rape.osx. Using a currently undisclosed vulnerability in mDNSResponder, the worm is said to give access to root as it spreads across the local network. As with a number of recent Apple-related security discoveries, the author, InfoSec Sellout, is delaying reporting the vulnerability to Apple until after completing full testing of the worm. While the worm has yet to leave a testing environment (with 1,500 OS X systems), it is bound to join the likes of Inqtana and Leap as known OS X malware."
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Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
Amen Brother - I would never do that
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Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
P.S. Oh! my god! The zipper on my flamesuit is STUCK! I'm so getting burnt.
Cheers!
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Re:Note to self (Score:4, Funny)
Brushed Aluminiummy or titaniummy is all Mac users get - not a hint of irony.
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Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Life found a way.
Now prepare to be nibbled on by velocimactors before finally getting chomped on a toilet by Lord Xenu's Applesaurus Rex.
Re:Note to self (Score:4, Funny)
Hey! Congratulations, elrous0. It worked!
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Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
It's called the Painkeep, thank you very much!
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Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
Actually you can, just stay outside of a 1 mile radius of all Starbucks and you'll be safe.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't cross a mac fanboy....
This is just a new vector on securing an operating system... and it probably works really well.
Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
KDE vs. GNOME?! Graphical user environments?! Kids these days! Back in my day, all we had was the good ol' fashioned vi vs. emacs argument, which I would like to point out to you is still going. I tell you what, that baby has stamina. None of these high-falutin' graphics and acronyms of capitalized letters, no, our flamewars were all lower case, the way they should be. We were so busy arguing, we didn't have time for shifting cases.
And all this business about Windows versus MacOS versus Linux? What has this world come to? All we had to argue over was OS/400 versus VMS. And the computers weren't even ours. We had to steal time on them from the neighbors, in the middle of the night when they weren't looking. And we had to sneak our terminal cables through their open windows, standing on snowdrifts in our bare feet. We couldn't afford shoes, because we spent all our money on our one lone screen. And it wasn't even 132 columns...
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Re:Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
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Woohoo!! (Score:3, Funny)
Should have picked a softer target (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Should have picked a softer target (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Should have picked a softer target (Score:5, Informative)
showing MACs blowing up and Steve Jobs carrying them
It's early yet, and the coffee hasn't kicked in, so I'm feeling a bit snippy. Please grant pardon for this:
When posting among confirmed geeks, you should understand the difference between "Mac" as a shortened colloquialism for "Macintosh," a brand of computer system, and "MAC," an acronym for "Media Access Controller," a component of a network controller, as in "my MAC address is 0F:BA:29:C6:D5:18." If you want to refer to a Macintosh as MAC, go post over at PCWeek.
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Now we know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now we know (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Now we know (Score:5, Insightful)
Security by malware author assassination?
Hey, if it works... I'm buying a Mac.
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Re:Now we know (Score:5, Funny)
There's MS's problem right there. They need to develop a chair that is fatal when thrown.
- RG>
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
*) standard disclaimers apply; for entertainment purposes only; your results may vary.
Well That's one way ... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that's one way to keep an OS safe, I guess. Just think how secure Windows would be if Bill Gates focused his vast resources on killing every malware author. Ballmer would probably do the dirty work cheap ... just for the thrill of it all.
Why, Bill might even have a few million bucks left over at the end of the day.
Re:Well That's one way ... (Score:5, Funny)
It's all about the assassins, assassins, assassins, assassins, assassins, assassins, assassins... assassins, assassins, assassins...
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I can just imagine the news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I can just imagine the news... (Score:4, Interesting)
"...this hair is most unusual --this is no human hair."
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Sounds familiar.... (Score:5, Funny)
More likely it is another publicity stunt (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing easier than to make threats to people on the Internet is to fake threats to oneself on the Internet. We got plenty of these drama queens in the nineties, hopefully this is not a trend that will come back.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-jcr
Re:More likely it is another publicity stunt (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like all of Maynor's other allegations?
I've posted to his blog a few times, especially the ones where he is claiming that he is being censored (??? I can't say what I'm saying on my own blog because they won't allow me to say what I'm now saying, but I'm saying it, but I'm really not because of a world conspiracy) -- but surprisingly, my comments never show. Only the comments where others are obviously blowing him get through. Of course, I'm not going to claim censorship -- thats bullshit -- only a government can censor, where as you have every right to disallow contrary thought in your own living room.
But everything about this man smacks of sensationalism. For instance:
"It was a great experiment to see how the industry could handle some honesty, which they can't. They are quick to attack the credibility of others in order to hide their own flaws."
What? Someone announces a flaw, but says they won't talk about it, hints that they will sell it to the highest bidder, and the company doesn't want to deal with you??? And then when they don't bite, claim that you were actually pre-compensated for writing this virus from someone else (now who would gain from this? Spammers? Scam Artists? Mafia? Microsoft? The only ones that would gain are the scum of the earth and he has no problem claiming to take money from them).
And finally:
"I made up the LMH identity for bashing Apple and appearing on the media while I was preparing for launching Errata Security with Robert. Since my credibility was severely damaged after the wireless driver exploit, I needed a sock puppet."
Admitting that he was manipulating the media, and has an ulterior motive to bash Apple, solely for bashing Apple. The guy lied in the first apple hack, he manipulated the media, worse yet -- academic dishonesty through his publication of the 'hack' at a conference with a setup that was guaranteed to work, even when they later claimed even if it did work, it would take a few hundred attempts to even crash a machine, and far more than that to weaponize it (i.e., nearly impossible).
AND HE ACTS SHOCKED THAT HIS CREDIBILITY IS DAMAGED AND BLAMES 'FANBOYS' WHO HE PREVIOUSLY STATED HE WANTED TO STICK CIGARETTES IN THE EYES OF AS THE REASON FOR HIS LACKING CRED.
What an idiot. I hate to give the man any more air time, but I hope this is the final straw. From what I understand, he use to be a pretty good security analyst...now its just all about the publicity and not actually doing any real work. I wish there was some real and credible persons working to find holes in OS X. I use it as my daily computer. I know one member of my team found one hole a few years ago and reported it to one of the developers and it was fixed quickly (and they were properly credited for it). I know there are holes in the system, like any system, and they need to be found. And unfortunately, the only ones working on finding anything are more interested in the sensationalism than anything else.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
However if it is true it's not the first time people poking fun at the Mac have had death threats; Overclockers had them [wired.com] when they pretended to put an Intel/Windows motherboard/system inside a G5 case and Maynor reported death threats [zdnet.com] after his Wifi debacle.
So Maynor got death threats when he blurbed about Wifi exploit (!) but not when they tried to harm Apple USERS (not company, not lusers, real average users) in every possible way for entire month? One of their first evil (!) security issue findings was VLC, yes the open source media player with millions of users including Mac. They announced it publicly instead of fixing the damn source code sitting there and didn't get a "death threat" from one user?
I am speaking about MOAB and their lame attacks even inc
Re:More likely it is another publicity stunt (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that the death threats need to be translated from blog-speak to their real world equivalents.
Blog-speak: thats dumb
Translation: I respectfully disagree on that point.
Blog-speak: ur a fuckin loser noob go eat shit
Translation: I strongly disagree, and hold you in low esteem.
Blog-speak: im gonna come find ur house and chainsaw you into pieces and feed u 2 my dawg
Translation: I find your opinions reprehensible and I see no value in continuing this discussion.
I don't know if it is even possible to express a legitimate death threat in blog-speak. Perhaps with punctuation it could be done.
Parent
Unacceptable (Score:3, Insightful)
fuzzing] The Truth (Score:5, Informative)
>br> "Since the cover is becoming more difficult to maintain, I've decided to stop this. It simply can't stand anymore and I can't let this harm my company and its customers.
I am David Maynor. I made up the LMH identity for bashing Apple and appearing on the media while I was preparing for launching Errata Security with Robert. Since my credibility was severely damaged after the wireless driver exploit, I needed a sock puppet. The idea of LMH and the Month of Apple Bugs came a while after I resigned from SecureWorks."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The above MD5 hash of a text file should serve as a proof in case
someone attempts to deny the statements of this message.[/blockquote]
Anyone care to tell me how expects the above to prove the email message you quoted is legit? If it is only a text file that David Maynor has how are we supposed to know what it is? If it is a text file that we can get at then how is the MD5 hash of it useful?
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, yeah. Count me skeptical.
Can anyone say "attention whore."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
hating Apple is like believing in god, apparently. no amount of proof for it needed, no amount of proof against is enough....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
yet you will notice that all the slashdoters assume he really has a virus and assume he really had threats made against him.
Back in 1999 Slashdot, Userfriendly, and several other sites were complicit in an April Fools joke. If I remember right, they claimed that some large entity had threatened Userfriendly and friends with legal action to shut them down for some unclear reason. The whole thing lacked any real information - but it had lots of emotional slight-of-hand. Various parts of the community were outraged - to include many Slashdot posters. These same people were even more outraged when it was announced that they ha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is far from impossible that there's a vulnerability in OS X; there have been vulnerabilities before, after all, and there will be again. Just because OS X is more secure in its out-of-box configuration than Windows is in its own out-of-box does not mean that OS X is completely invulnerable to all future threats. Heck,
Cognitive dissonance (Score:5, Insightful)
The New Ad (Score:5, Funny)
Mac: And I'm a Mac. PC, who are all those people smacking you in the head and rifling your pockets?
PC: [Sigh] Those are viruses and worms. Even though I scream "DENY! DENY!" as loudly as I can, they keep smacking me in the head and rifling my pockets. You know how it is.
Mac: Actually, I don't. You see, with a Mac...
[One of the worms moves sinisterly toward the Mac. A man in a black suit appears suddenly from the right and collars the worm, shaking it roughly.]
Man In Black Suit: Listen, woim. If you takes one more step taword da Mac kid, I'm gonna whack you and yer whole family, see?
Worm: Uh... uh... I'm just a proof of concept.
MIBS: Concept shmoncept. Not only will I whack you and yer family, I'm going to hack yer blog so bad it'll look like AintItCool.com.
Worm: [panics, runs away, screaming]
MIBS: [Claps hands as though rubbing dirt off. As he leaves to the right, Mac slips him a small paper sack.] Tanks, kid.
Mac: As I was saying, with a Mac, there are no viruses.
Unverified claims to support unverified claims (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we have unverified claims of death threats to add credibility to unverified claims of worms attacking a deep flaw in mDNSresponder... a flaw so subtle that Apple wouldn't be able to fix it without the help of said anonymous researcher who's allegedly received death threats over it.
Now this could all be true, but then SCO could really have thousands of lines of Linux code copied from UNIX they're still hiding so they can bring it out in a dramatic eleventh-hour release and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
I don't doubt that there's flaws in mDNSresponder. I don't doubt that you could write a worm to exploit them. I don't doubt that Apple is capable of fixing one symptom of a flaw rather than the cause... they've done it before. But there's nothing new here... schemes like Rendozvous/Bonjour/Zeroconf and the superficially similar "Universal Plug and Play" in Windows are a compelling target for potential attacks and have been criticized in the past. They're not needed for the normal operation of the system, and should be disabled unless you actually know you need them and are on a known secure LAN
But there is no way that any legitimate security professional would proceed in the manner that the people alleged to be involved in have been behaving over the past several months. The whole presentation of this affair seems almost designed to discredit the security community in the public eye.
Notify Apple, then release the details. There's no other ethical course of action.
David Maynor != LMH (Score:3, Informative)
Dispatch Tuesday (Score:5, Funny)
Dispatch Tuesday is so much cooler than Patch Tuesday.
From the dictionary [thefreedictionary.com]
Dispatch == To put to death summarily.
You are crossing a maniacal Mac Fanboy.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So it seems like.. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:So it seems like.. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So this "security researcher" cannot even keep (Score:5, Insightful)
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