macOS Exploit Published on the Last Day of 2017 (bleepingcomputer.com) 62
An anonymous reader shares a report: On the last day of 2017, a security researcher going online by the pseudonym of Siguza published details about a macOS vulnerability affecting all Mac operating system versions released since 2002, and possibly earlier. Siguza did not notify Apple in advance, so at the time of writing, there is no fix for this flaw. Despite the doom and gloom, the vulnerability is only a local privilege escalation (LPE) flaw that can only be exploited with local access to a computer or after an attacker has already got a foothold on a machine. The vulnerability grants root access to an attacker. The issue affects the IOHIDFamily macOS kernel driver, a component that handles various types of user interactions. Siguza said he read about various flaws in this component and took a look at it to find new ways to compromise iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, where IOHIDFamily is also deployed. The expert says he found the LPE flaw in the IOHIDFamily code specific to macOS versions only. In a tweet, Siguza said, "My primary goal was to get the write-up out for people to read. I wouldn't sell to blackhats because I don't wanna help their cause. I would've submitted to Apple if their bug bounty included macOS, or if the vuln was remotely exploitable.
only a local privilege escalation (Score:1)
Oh, it's "only a local privilege escalation". No worries then.
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oh wait... Anyone who has physical access AIN root on any mac dating back to 2002 and it remains unpatched... Yeah definitely unimportant. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Kind Regards,
Tim Cook
While it is true that Macs are long-lived; I would be very surprised to see many G3 Macs still kickin' it in any sort of a production environment, SEVENTEEN years later...
(Yes, I know it said "Starting with" 2002)...
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You're suggesting Windows machines are Superior for longevity?
No, but he accidentally implied it. I'll just go ahead and come out and say it, though. The G4 macs are still fast enough to be useful and the G5 macs are still fast enough to actually be snappy but Apple has abandoned them all. That's what you get for dicking around with precious architectures. Now that they are just making x86-64 PCs, though, they have no excuse for their weirdness.
Re: only a local privilege escalation (Score:2)
Re:only a local privilege escalation (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, it's "only a local privilege escalation". No worries then.
For the majority of use cases, that's pretty much it; you still have to convince someone to give you basic (local or remote) access to the box first.
Same story on *any* OS, come to think of it.
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Or you could just log in as "root" no password required.
Exactly. That would work on exactly ONE (minor-revisions) of ONE Major Revision of macOS.
Go back to where you came from, Troll...
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Also, what's your complaint anyway? That a big OS had security bugs and flaws? Ok, yes it did. I got news for you. MacOS 7 had them too. Now that the marketshare is high again, people are looking for them. but they've always been there. Just like in Windows. And whatever fake OS
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If you have a process running on macOS with ambient authority then in most cases a root exploit doesn't give you much - you can already access and modify everything that the user cares about. A vulnerability like this; however, can also be exploited by sandboxed applications (though hopefully not sandboxed daemons, which shouldn't have access to the HIDs).
Most Apple apps are now sandboxed, as are Microsoft Office and anything that is distributed via the App Store. I posted above that most people don't
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Stuxnet needed a local privilege escalation to work
http://www.zdnet.com/article/s... [zdnet.com]
As new details emerge to shine a brighter light on the Stuxnet attack, Microsoft said the attackers initially targeted the old MS08-067 vulnerability (used in the Conficker attack), a new LNK (Windows Shortcut) flaw to launch exploit code on vulnerable Windows systems and a zero-day bug in the Print Spooler Service that makes it possible for malicious code to be passed to, and then executed on, a remote machine.
The malware also exploited two different elevation of privilege holes to gain complete control over the affected system. These two flaws are still unpatched.
I.e. the problem is not your buddy lends you their machine, it's that code arrives by more dubious means and uses a privilege escalation to be able to do more damage.
I could see Macs being hit with something which encrypts files and demands a password to decrypt them and privilege escalation would be necessary for such an attack.
Best make sure you've got a Time Machine backup on a removable disk.
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Re:only a local privilege escalation (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's worse than that. It's a local privilege escalation, already patched in macOS 13.0.2 via ROP and race conditions during logout/shutdown of the computer, it requires a LOT of luck and is very time sensitive for it to work, in my testing most of the time the thing will either fail or crash the kernel.
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I don't think it's patched.
From the description (regarding the kernel slide part only):
The technique explained below has for some reason stopped working on macOS High Sierra 10.13.2. I don’t know why and I didn’t bother to investigate, but the IOHIDFamily vulnerability is still there all the same. So while the hid binary in its current state will only work up to 10.13.1, you could just patch together hid and leak to get everything working on 10.13.2 - or even write a mach-port-based exploit out
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Yeah, so in theory it works but I've tried it, I can't get it to work. The kernel will literally block either the hid or the leak binaries from working, the bug may still be there but the kernel prevents it from working. But even on older kernels, the worst I got was a kernel panic, I never got root access or SIP to turn off on 10.12 or 10.13.
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Selling 0-days, or just vulnerabilities in general is quite easy. the buyers are very keen to buy and are not hard to find.
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True, but as far as I can see Apple have never done that.
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Ya they kinda do.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111107/18193216671/find-vulnerability-apple-software-lose-your-license-as-apple-developer.shtml [techdirt.com]
Re:Alerting the devlopers (Score:5, Informative)
Ya they kinda do.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111107/18193216671/find-vulnerability-apple-software-lose-your-license-as-apple-developer.shtml [techdirt.com]
They didn't SUE. They simply revoked his Developer Cert.
Which is EXACTLY what they SHOULD have done.
Charlie Miller is no fool. One would ASSUME he knows the rules. But instead, he thought he'd be snarky and submit an iOS App that he KNEW violated his Developer Agreement, and then, when the App got Approved, he LEFT IT UP FOR A MONTH, where ANYONE could have downloaded and "learned" from it.
Yeah, he deserved what he got; regardless of how "altruistic" his intentions were (which I believe they actually were).
But he DIDN'T get SUED.
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There hasn't been a visionary in charge there since the early 90s.
What? Gil Ameilio? Or John Sculley, Pepsi man???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Ohhhh Kaaaaayyyy...
Yeah, one of them was "visionary" enough to have Apple running in about 20 different directions at once (when it wasn't big enough to handle that!), and the other one nearly bankrupted the Company by licensing MacOS and Macintosh ROM code to Third Parties.
Yeah, visionaries...
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Maybe he was referring to Michael Spindler? It would be just as comical...
He did manage to get PowerPC out the door, I guess.
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Maybe he was referring to Michael Spindler? It would be just as comical...
He did manage to get PowerPC out the door, I guess.
You're right! I forgot ALL about him!!!
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Without a visionary in charge, the company cuts corners and is losing major ground in 2018. If I owned Apple stock it'd be sold today.
The best thing that could happen to Apple (and to Apple users) is if Elon Musk took control of Apple without him losing any influence at Tesla or SpaceX.
These companies are a good fit, really. Tesla would have Apple product design power and Apple could benefit from someone clearly on Steve Jobs' visionary and operational level.
Something like this or similar: https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com]
Stupid. Fucking. Hater. Die Hater, Die!!!
From TFS, this Vulnerability has likely been around since 2002. Steve Jobs didn't die until late 2011.
So, what in the FUCK does the loss of a "visionary" have to do with this Exploit?
Answer: Abso-lutely FUCKING NOTHING!!!
So, go Hate somewhere else, Moron! We're busy here...
Re:Apple is getting fat and lazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupid. Fucking. Hater. Die Hater, Die!!!
Why the fuck did this get (+5)?
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Stupid. Fucking. Hater. Die Hater, Die!!!
Why the fuck did this get (+5)?
I dunno. Maybe because I was RIGHT.
The bigger question would be why is YOUR post +4 INSIGHTFUL?
WTF "Insight" is there in asking why someone ELSE was modded UP???
Re: Apple is getting fat and lazy (Score:2)
Re: Apple is getting fat and lazy (Score:2)
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Why the fuck did this get (+5)?
Same reason posts critical of Apple get modded down... iFanboys with modpoints.
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Thanks. That was funny.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple is getting fat and lazy (Score:5, Interesting)
The good news is that even on the absolute first version of OS X, if you wanted to do anything that was outside the user home folder, or even with the user's keychain, it would ask for your password.
I don't know about you, but if you go to a web site and then it starts asking for your system password, YOU DO NOT PUT IT IN.
You are correct that Safari auto-expanding compressed archives wasn't a good idea. However, the inherent security design that the actual engineers managed to persuade Jobs to keep in the OS prevented major damage from things like that, to the point that even Jobs was recounting his at-the-time skepticism and praising that design and those engineers in on-stage interviews years later.
No operating system is without flaws. However, mix a bit of common sense in with good design, and you come out ahead of just good design.
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That's not been an issue if the user isn't blindly putting in their password to everything that pops up - the box that pops up for authentication is presented by the authentication library and gives the name of the calling application and is somewhat generic. The historic Software Update box has always looked unique, and lists what updates it would be downloading and immediately asks for your password upon clicking "install" and is identified as Apple Software Update. Now, they are done through the App St
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That's not been an issue if the user isn't blindly putting in their password to everything that pops up
Welcome to the Real World(tm) where users act like idiots all day, every day.
I see what you are saying though - yes it's probably possible to go through some form of convoluted combination of exploits and vulnerabilities to "own" someone, but that is the case with every OS. The fact that it hasn't happened in 15+ years says something about how difficult it would be to do, though it isn't the complete story by any means.
What hasn't happened in 15+ years? OSX? There's been plenty of people trojan'd on OSX.
Re:Apple is getting fat and lazy (Score:5, Funny)
Without a visionary in charge, the company cuts corners and is losing major ground in 2018.
Apple is losing major ground, one business day in to 2018? Better sell stocks stat!
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Wait a second... are we returning to the days of "beleaguered" Apple? Do we get to pull that off the shelf again? It's been like 20 years since we've been able to use that...
Impressive (Score:3)
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...the last root exploit only required you to type "root" and no password.
A computer does exactly as it’s instructed and you complain. There’s just no pleasing some people...
Re: Impressive (Score:2)
This is sooooo 2017 (Score:3)
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A vulnerability from back in 2017 is probably old enough to not be worth fixating.
I remember 2017 like it was only a couple of days ago...
Chinese USB Something ? (Score:1)
I read IOHIDFamily, which contain IO and HID. Obviously, but, this means USB to me, and, doing basic math, I'm wondering whether a no-name Chinese USB device could use this hole to implant some malware.