Slashdot Mirror
Worm Claimed For Apple OS X
SkiifGeek writes "Controversy is slowly building over the development of a claimed new worm that targets OS X systems, dubbed by its inventor Rape.osx. Using a currently undisclosed vulnerability in mDNSResponder, the worm is said to give access to root as it spreads across the local network. As with a number of recent Apple-related security discoveries, the author, InfoSec Sellout, is delaying reporting the vulnerability to Apple until after completing full testing of the worm. While the worm has yet to leave a testing environment (with 1,500 OS X systems), it is bound to join the likes of Inqtana and Leap as known OS X malware."
Hey, there's a worm in my apple...
It's not a flaw; it's a feature. Remember, things are a little different in the Apple world ;)
As with a number of recent Apple-related security discoveries, the author, InfoSec Sellout, is delaying reporting the vulnerability to Apple until after completing full testing of the worm.
If by fully testing you mean "auctioning it to the highest bidder" then yea.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Disable mDNSResponder:
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSRespon der.plist
sudo launchctl unload -w
First of all, if he's found a real vulnerability, he reports it. I don't care if it's Apple or Linux or even Windows. "Waiting until I finish it" is a disgusting excuse. Will he sell it to the bad guys? Is this free publicity for some jerk? I think the Slashdot world ought to have a serious discussion of this kind of jerk. I think Congress might to. If what he's doing isn't illegal now, maybe it should be.
The fact that the breaking news on slashdot is "someone found the third way to attack a mac machine" is a compelling argument to purchase a mac over a PC. Unless someone can explain to me how this is the seed of an impending snowball of mac-targeted malware.
exactly what vulnerability in mDNSResponder is it exploiting? Since mDNSResponder also runs on windows if you install bonjour for Windows, does that mean it can possibly be affected too?
Somebody writes a worm for OSX that works across a specific test network (of which we have no clue as to settings, layout, patch levels, etc etc), and it's really, really, really big news. Media orgs around the planet sound the klaxon, and (nearly) everyone gets all hyper-ventilated. Claims of "OSX is just as vulnerable!!!1111!!" will fly off the pages.
Meanwhile, the next near-periodic iteration of MSFT-specific malware in-the-wild will get not so much as a grunt outside of security circles (such as SANS ISC and F-Secure's blog as ferinstances). It will likely subvert 40x as many victims in its first hour, and the media won't say so much as 'boo' about it.
Perspective (at least outside of security and some geek circles)? Never heard of it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's a bug, it's a problem, but it's no Blaster by a long shot.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
mDNSResponder is open source.
Sure, get infected on the school's lab LAN. Bring your iBook oops MacBook to the coffee shop and get everyone else there. They all go home and infect their room-mate's machines. Who go to a different lab and it gets loose on the LAN there.
Most laptops aren't isolated to a single LAN these days; they move around. If there really is a flaw in mDNSResponder, then such a worm does have a chance to propagate. Especially if it is subtle and doesn't crash or overload machines, or do insane amounts of network I/O, or any of the other things that cause people to think something's wrong.
If this is a real concern, there is a workaround to have mDNSResponder run without root privileges. Part of the claim is that they can deliver root payloads - this is likely because mDNSResponder runs as the root user and they might be using a buffer overflow exploit [NOTE: I have not analyzed the mDNSResponder code - this is a guess.]
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSRespon der.plist /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSRespon der.plist
% sudo launchctl unload
% sudo chown nobody:wheel
% sudo chmod 4750
% sudo launchctl load
If someone wants an explanation of what the above commands accomplish, please read further.
1. launchctl is used to unload and load the mDNSResponder daemon.
2. We change the owner of the mDNSResponder to nobody and ensure that wheel is the group. The group is used to ensure that members of the wheel group may launch mDNSResponder and not other users of the system (with the exception of root and anything else running as nobody.)
3. We change the permissions of the mDNSResponder program to be setuid nobody. This means that mDNSResponder will run as nobody and only be able to affect files owned by that account or by files it may happen to have write privileges against.
Apart from the claim by infosec sellout sounding less than adult - he says the payload was "weaponised" - and his claim that Apple will somehow not fix the "root cause" of the vulnerability if he gives it to them now - extortion anyone? mDNSResponder is Open Source - I seriously question how some independent reearcher can have, as he claims, a test base of 1500 systems. A big company with $1million to throw around might have that, or a university, but I seriously doubt he has the place or resources to afford a test base of this size unless he is using a local university or school, and judging by his spelling and grammar, he is either not English native or he is a teenager, or both. That says nothing about the veracity (truth) of his claim but it is somewhat juvenile, the whole thing.
- It doesn't exist in the wild; this is because of OS X's stunning security features
- This vulnerability was probably placed into the system by Jobs himself. If there were no vulnerabilities in OS X people would realize Jobs was supernatural, so he has to put one in there from time to time.
- This vulnerability is probably the last vulnerability in OS X. Once Apple fixes this there'll be no more
- Way, way more vulnerabilities are found in Windows and Windows products; this is because of OS X's breathtaking security features
- This is probably a bug in BSD or Mach code, or one of the recent Intel chip bugs, or a Microsoft employee infiltrated the Cupertino campus. It's not Apple's fault.
- Microsoft spends its entire R&D budget looking for these elusive Apple holes just as a way of discrediting Apple. If the real number of Microsoft and Linux vulnerabilities were actually disclosed there would be no comparison.
- Apple puts the occasional vulnerability in its system because they know that Microsoft blindly copies anything Apple does. If Apple puts one bug into their system they know Microsoft will put 10 bugs in theirs.
- Microsoft worms spread spambots and steal credit card information, Apple worms are just a misguided attempt of a loyal Apple fan to spread the good vibes and let the community know he cares. With Mac OS X only your unquestioning loyalty is contagious.
Such a breathtaking OS on a rock solid foundation with over 1 million configurations. Say hello to OS X Panda. Starting at $99. Small sentence. Reinvented.// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
The Windows camp has nothing to gloat about as long as I'm getting a hundred spam messages a day from compromised Windows machines.
Most of the stuff on
10.4.10 isn`t on the affected systems list.
The only people I always see spouting such crap are the people who claim to hate Apple fanboys. I've never seen an Apple fanboy make absurd claims like yours. This is like a fucking self-fullfilling prophecy. Every damn article about Apple is run over by stupid Anti-Apple trolls who write hundreds of comments laughing about imaginary Apple fanboys and the imaginary stupid things they say.
Here's an idea: Shut up, and let those who are interested in the article discuss it. Thanks.