Slashdot Mirror
Johnny Cache Breaks Silence On Wi-Fi Exploit
Joe Barr writes, "Johnny Cache — aka Jon Ellch — is chafing under the cone of silence placed over him and co-presenter Dave Maynor about the Wi-Fi exploit they presented at Black Hat and DEFCON last month. So he has finally broken his silence on NewsForge in hopes of ending the personal attacks coming from what he implies is a smear campaign started by Apple." (Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.)
Johhny Cache writes, "If you're going to post a news story that is a rehash of my post to a mailing list, I would much prefer it if people actaully just read the post in its entirety."
Johhny Cache writes, "If you're going to post a news story that is a rehash of my post to a mailing list, I would much prefer it if people actaully just read the post in its entirety."
The classic defense of the madman or the liar: "What I say is true, but terrible, unspeakable things would happen were I to prove my assertion. You'll just have to take my inability to prove my assertion as evidence of its validity."
What a schmuck.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Apple probably looked at these guys and laughed.
Next thing you know, these guys will be "discovering" cold fusion.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
It's blatantly obvious that Apple's lawyers have come down on him like a ton of bricks
If Apple's lawyers wrote a nastygram to these guys, don't you think we'd have seen it by now? The first thing anyone in a public situation like this does when they get pressure from the big players is to publicize the legal threats.
At the moment all we have is the word of someone who cast aspersions at Mac users, disingenuously claimed that he was exploiting Apple security flaws, and now claims (not so subtly) that Apple's lawyers are the reason he can't come clean.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
At BlackHat Johnny Cache claimed this alleged exploit is not platform-specific, he only picked a Macbook for the demo to piss off Apple fanboys. If that's so, and the exploit really works, why not demonstrate rooting Linux or Windows or if you really want to stir up security trolls on slashdot, NetBSD?
Is the exploit real? Who knows, I've seen video of someone cracking a Mac through a wireless driver. Then again I've also seen video of a virus written on a Mac taking down a fleet of invading alien spaceships...
0 1 - just my two bits
So, if I put on my blog that I challenge George Bush to provide some proof of [pick anything that's ever come out of his mouth], at a mall of his choosing, and I'll give him a free laptop if he does it, and he never shows up, that proves ... what exactly?
I'm sure John Gruber's blog is extremely important to John Gruber, but if some guys who are clearly dealing with a mountain of legal issues right now choose not to meet him at the mall, you can't take that as evidence of anything -- except that Gruber's pretty clever at diverting attention to himself.
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
Ah, much like the slashdot community with Microsoft
The only difference is most of us don't need a rigged demo to break into a Windows machine...
The way these things work is that when someone hacks your hardware, you get an injunction to stop them from talking about it. If they talk about it, they go to jail for contempt of court. If you were to RTFA, you might get the very strong impression that he's under an injunction of this type.
It's always fun to look for bad guys in situations like this, but both Apple and Mr. "Cache" here are wearing white hats. You want both of them to be doing what they're doing, and it's lame to make it into a flame war. You want Mr. Cache breaking drivers, because then they get fixed, and your Mac doesn't get 0wned when you're down at Starbucks watching YouTube videos.
And you want Apple to try to dissuade him from publishing his hack, because you want them to fix it before every random hacker figures it out, and the sooner he publishes, the sooner the black hats will have an exploit. So if Apple doesn't get him to stop talking, maybe your Mac will get 0wned down at *$$.
But you still want Apple to be paranoid about the information getting out, so that they release the bug fix quickly, not slowly. And so what he's done with this article is useful, because he's basically said how the hack works, and now presumably the black hats are working on trying to duplicate the hack. And Apple knows this, and so the patch release will probably come sooner. And so your laptop won't get 0wned at *$$. W00t!
What I don't see here is bluster. This isn't high school. People don't get up on stage at defcon and claim to have hacked something they didn't really hack. The reason they do these hacks is to improve security, not to count coup. You owe the guy your thanks, not your hopes that his reputation is ruined.
So what if he is? If his hack works, it works. Period.
An attack on his personality doesn't invalidate that.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
You aren't even making a good argument, and bringing in a strawman (IE: Bush) isn't going to help you.
He's making a great argument - I'd say that the fact that you don't know what a strawman is stopping you from understanding it.
If I had mod points, I would mod you down. Not only do you demonstrate a complete disdain for whoever you think is "inferior," you show a complete lack of understanding for the issues in the middle east.
There is no "inferiority complex" in the middle east. They aren't emo kids running around threatening to slit their wrists. It just so happens that their standards of living are ridiculously low compared to the standards of living of "the west," not directly due to us, but partially. If you grew up there, you'd be looking for someone to blame, and their government provides "the great satan" as a convenient scapegoat. Further proving their point, "the great satan's puppet in the region," (aka israel) has just rampaged through lebanon, destroying civilian targets like bridges, hospitals, and airports, further degrading their quality of life. it's lack of understanding of the kind that you have just demonstrated that has brought us into the current situation in iraq and afghanistan, as well as the US unspoken nod to israel to rampage across the middle east.
this in no way relevant to the situations of mac users, who just happen to have a different OS preference. your above statement would be like saying that whenever an african american person acts stereotypically black (whatever you might define that as) they are acting out of a feeling of self-inferiority.
think about it.
Then he should post the details for those of us who understand what he's talking about, and leave the other people to wallow in their own ignorance.
Deliberately withholding information because of some nebulous "threat" that has never been proven smacks of misdirection and just more "shell-game" antics by some folks who have a personal beef with Apple.
I don't really care if they hate Apple's userbase with all the bile of Hell... if they're serious about this and are not just faking the results to be pissy children, then come out with it. Otherwise, they just need to STFU.
Claiming that he won't reveal details because "no one understands" sounds like HE doesn't understand most likely.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Most Mac users insult their own intelligence.
I have a Mac and it's great. Unfortunately the majority of Mac users are an embarrassment. I sometimes cringe when I read the comments on Mac blogs - the Mac users make Linux fans look humble and Windows users look intelligent.
I work in the IT security industry and I'm perfectly willing to accept that this exploit is for real. The pattern of events is not abnormal: the exploit will be demonstrated at a conference but because of NDA the details remain under wraps until the manufacturer releases a patch. I've seen delays of 12-18 months before details are released for Windows exploits, despite seeing the exploit demonstrated in person at blackhat conferences. A delay of a few weeks for an Apple exploit doesn't even raise my eyebrows.
The only difference here is that Apple users are so goddamn fanatical that they'll rabidly attack anybody who says their platform is any less than perfect. They don't know the security field, they don't understand the technical discussion - those quotes Johnny provided of clueless Mac users were riotous - yet they feel qualified to give opinion. I used to work with this guy who was brilliant at finding and exploiting security holes. He took a G3 Mac running stock standard OSX and proceeded to demonstrate exploit after exploit; not based on his OSX skill but purely on his knowledge of the underlying free software. I was at a blackhat conference where they demonstrated a local privilege escalation exploit that existed all the way up to Tiger - they had told Apple about it years previously but it wasn't until they broke their NDA and went public that Apple fixed the fault. The same presentation at that conference demonstrated an OSX kernel exploit that still exists today.
Mac users are in for a rude shock. They've told each other their platform is secure. The rumor mills repeated the "OSX is secure" mantra. But the mantra has no foundation in reality. Most Mac users do not run AV, do not shutdown services, and run with wide-open wifi and bluetooth settings. They have an undeserved complacency regarding security and it will lead to a fall.
The way these things work is that when someone hacks your hardware, you get an injunction to stop them from talking about it. If they talk about it, they go to jail for contempt of court. If you were to RTFA, you might get the very strong impression that he's under an injunction of this type.
Instead of letting us infer the facts, why not just say "because of a court order, we can't talk about it"? It happens all the time.
If there is a hack, I want to know. I'm not looking for details, I just want the answer to Jon Gruber's question: "Have Maynor and Ellch found a vulnerability that affects MacBooks using Apple's built-in cards and drivers?"
If the answer is "yes" or "no" just say so! If they're under a gag order, just say "We're under a gag order." Asking us to read between the lines isn't cutting it.
Not to mention that the ad-homs aren't helping his credibility...