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Mac Developer Mulls Zero-day Security Response

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the in-the-nick-of-time dept.

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."

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. This is not a "move on Apple's part" by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple isn't doing this, and Landon Fuller doesn't have anything to do with Apple, other than having worked there. (And no, conspiracy theorists, he's not doing this at Apple's behest or as part of some coordinated fanboy effort to "make Apple look good".)

    What Apple should be doing is developing a much more comprehensive and responsive security response group, which is lacking now. Apple needs to be patching issues in a much more timely manner. Hopefully the outcome of MOAB, things like Fuller's proposal, and other related things will be a real discourse on Apple security response and Mac OS X security.

  2. Unnecessary. by sakusha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Almost all of the MOAB bugs have already been patched, including OS fixes by Apple. Some of the application fixes were released within hours of the public announcement of the bug. Yet NONE of those fixes have been linked on the MOAB website.

    The normal processes are working. What is NOT working is the MOAB process. If they used the normal procedure of notifying the developers privately, these bugs could have been fixed in days or even hours, before any public disclosure. But that wouldn't achieve what the MOAB hackers wanted. MOAB isn't about security, it's about publicity whoring.

    1. Re:Unnecessary. by Rosyna · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have to realize that MOAB isn't an unwarranted attack against Apple. It's backlash for years of flaky technical support, deceitful practices and arrogance on the part of the Mac community in general.

      Yeah, that's clearly their intention after you look at the non-apple issues such as the ones in OmniWeb, Transmit, VLC, Flip4Mac, Rumpus, et cetera. Clearly, those are an attack against apple's "flaky technical support".