U of Wisconsin's Mac OS X Security Challenge

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday March 7, 2006 @02:10AM from the they-really-don't-have-anything-better-to-do-over-there dept.

digitalsurgeon writes "The University of Wisconsin [ed: Go Badgers] has launched a Mac OS X Security challenge, in response to a 'woefully misleading ZDnet article'. From the site: 'The challenge is as follows: simply alter the web page on this machine, test.doit.wisc.edu. The machine is a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, has two local accounts, and has ssh and http open - a lot more than most Mac OS X machines will ever have open.' Are you up to the task? Can you prove ZDNet wrong, or can you show that Mac OS X can really be hacked in less then 30 minutes? More information about the challenge is at http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ The challenge ends Fri 10 March 2006 10:00 AM CST." Update: 03/07 14:32 GMT by Z : Commentary on the contest and original claim is available at VNUNet

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Generic smear campaign by catwh0re · 2006-03-07 02:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've noticed a significant rise in anti-macosx articles recently. To the point where I'm beginning to believe that it is staged. Each article usually has 3 points to make: Mac OSX is not *nix, Max OSX is insecure and "easy" to hack (and not a target due to small install base.) and that Apple are slow with patches to security faults.
So far each article has been based on unique situations that lack credibility to begin with, give little detail, and take focus away from the fact that it's basically a machine running a collective of industry proven software (such as apache and openssh.)
Also of note is that Mac OSX currently has an a user base of over 10 million machines. So the argument that it's too small a target is ridiculous. In fact it's a bigger target as it's untouched territory with a bonus of headline making news.