Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MacBook Hacked In Contest Via Zero-Day Hole in Safari

Posted by Zonk on from the and-the-winner-is dept.

EMB Numbers writes "Shane Macaulay just won a MacBook as a prize for successfully hacking OS X at CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC. The hack was based on a Safari vulnerability found by Dai Zovi and written in about 9 hours. CanSecWest organizers actually had to relax the contest rules to make the hack possible, because initially nobody at the event could breach the computers under the original restrictions. 'Dai Zovi plans to apply for a $10,000 bug bounty TippingPoint announced on Thursday if a previously unknown Apple bug was used. "Shane can have the laptop, I want the money," Dai Zovi said in a telephone interview from New York. TippingPoint runs the Zero Day Initiative bug bounty program.'"

7 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Konqueror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Safari's rendering engine is based on KHTML. So is Konqueror affected by this flaw as well?

    1. Re:Konqueror by Fooker · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thats a good question. There's a good chance it could be. Then again with the speed that updates/patch's/fix's come out for Linux, if it does it'll be fixed in a relatively short time.

    2. Re:Konqueror by Tickletaint · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Why say "Linux" rather than open source? KHTML has nothing to do with Linux. Anyway, from what I've been reading, it seems more likely related to a bug in JavaScriptCore, derived from KJS and which is also open source.

      By the way—

      updates/patch's/fix's
      Should be "update's," for consistency.
      --
      Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
  2. Admin user or regular user? by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wish they would say if the user that safari was running under was admin or regular. If it was admin then this is even less of a hack than it already is. Also I wonder if they disabled the safari feature to automatically "open safe files after downloading". That option puts a lot of trust in other programs not to have holes. indeed it's not really safe at all. Only stupid people or people that don't do stupid things leave it on.

    Bottom line no remote hacks.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:Admin user or regular user? by Tickletaint · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Interesting that your sig:

      You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?
      skewers that very behavior of Safari you describe. Of course, if you have "open safe files after downloading" turned off, it's even more obnoxious—you have to find the file on your desktop and open it manually. Exactly the sort of repetitive task I thought my computer should be doing on my behalf.
      --
      Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
  3. no such thing as a white hat... by Animaether · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...is there?

    I mean - I can only assume this was a 'white hat' hackers conference, given there was actual publicity given and a public bounty and such. But then things like these pop up?

    "'Shane can have the laptop, I want the money,' Dai Zovi said in a telephone interview from New York"
    "Conference attendees were underwhelmed, reasoning a Mac exploit that required no end-user interaction could be sold for upwards of $20,000."


    Makes me think.. black hat, white hat.. what's the difference these days? I thought a white hat hacker was the 'good guy' (albeit still a hacker).. the kind of person who hacks for fun / curiosity.. the kind of person who notifies the developer of the bug or, at least, just makes the bug known to the world at no charge. Not the kind of person who hacks, then scours the 'security conferences' for a bounty, and when that bounty is lower than what they could get off of actual 'bad guys', complain that the bounty is too low. To me, that just sounds like the person is a black hat, but dons a white hat on top in an attempt to fool us into thinking they're white hat.
  4. What I want to know by HairyCanary · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How was the machine configured relative to an off-the-shelf OSX installation?

    While I understand that for the purposes of the contest it might have been necessary to reduce those protections, I think that before something becomes "news" we should know what the real risk is.

    Does this hack require the user to manually disable protections the OS ships with, or manually enable services that default to off? The article seems light on detail.