Mac Worm Author Gets Death Threats

StonyandCher write(s) to spread news about the strange story of the reported Apple OS X worm, which is growing stranger by the day. The blog of the researcher who claimed to have created the malware reportedly received death threats. The blog was then hijacked, according to the researcher, who calls him/herself InfoSec Sellout. InfoSec blamed David Maynor for hacking the blog. For his part, Maynor apparently unmasked himself as "LMH" and InfoSec as Jon Ramsey. The post to the Fuzzing mailing list has not been independently confirmed.
Update: 07/19 13:48 GMT by KD : David Maynor wrote in and denies that he is LMH.

Comments

More likely it is another publicity stunt

[vivaoporto]

More likely it is another publicity stunt, to make their work to look more "legitimate", to get more people to side with them (the "I may not agree with what you say, but would defend to death your right to say it" crowd), to generalize even more the feeling that Mac users are dangerous fanboys disconnected with the reality, etc.

The only thing easier than to make threats to people on the Internet is to fake threats to oneself on the Internet. We got plenty of these drama queens in the nineties, hopefully this is not a trend that will come back.

Re:More likely it is another publicity stunt

[CopaceticOpus]

The problem here is that the death threats need to be translated from blog-speak to their real world equivalents.

Blog-speak: thats dumb
Translation: I respectfully disagree on that point.

Blog-speak: ur a fuckin loser noob go eat shit
Translation: I strongly disagree, and hold you in low esteem.

Blog-speak: im gonna come find ur house and chainsaw you into pieces and feed u 2 my dawg
Translation: I find your opinions reprehensible and I see no value in continuing this discussion.

I don't know if it is even possible to express a legitimate death threat in blog-speak. Perhaps with punctuation it could be done.

Re:More likely it is another publicity stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

"None of the claims have been substantiated, neither the alleged worm itself, nor the alleged threats."

You mean like all of Maynor's other allegations?

I've posted to his blog a few times, especially the ones where he is claiming that he is being censored (??? I can't say what I'm saying on my own blog because they won't allow me to say what I'm now saying, but I'm saying it, but I'm really not because of a world conspiracy) -- but surprisingly, my comments never show. Only the comments where others are obviously blowing him get through. Of course, I'm not going to claim censorship -- thats bullshit -- only a government can censor, where as you have every right to disallow contrary thought in your own living room.

But everything about this man smacks of sensationalism. For instance:

"It was a great experiment to see how the industry could handle some honesty, which they can't. They are quick to attack the credibility of others in order to hide their own flaws."

What? Someone announces a flaw, but says they won't talk about it, hints that they will sell it to the highest bidder, and the company doesn't want to deal with you??? And then when they don't bite, claim that you were actually pre-compensated for writing this virus from someone else (now who would gain from this? Spammers? Scam Artists? Mafia? Microsoft? The only ones that would gain are the scum of the earth and he has no problem claiming to take money from them).

And finally:

"I made up the LMH identity for bashing Apple and appearing on the media while I was preparing for launching Errata Security with Robert. Since my credibility was severely damaged after the wireless driver exploit, I needed a sock puppet."

Admitting that he was manipulating the media, and has an ulterior motive to bash Apple, solely for bashing Apple. The guy lied in the first apple hack, he manipulated the media, worse yet -- academic dishonesty through his publication of the 'hack' at a conference with a setup that was guaranteed to work, even when they later claimed even if it did work, it would take a few hundred attempts to even crash a machine, and far more than that to weaponize it (i.e., nearly impossible).

AND HE ACTS SHOCKED THAT HIS CREDIBILITY IS DAMAGED AND BLAMES 'FANBOYS' WHO HE PREVIOUSLY STATED HE WANTED TO STICK CIGARETTES IN THE EYES OF AS THE REASON FOR HIS LACKING CRED.

What an idiot. I hate to give the man any more air time, but I hope this is the final straw. From what I understand, he use to be a pretty good security analyst...now its just all about the publicity and not actually doing any real work. I wish there was some real and credible persons working to find holes in OS X. I use it as my daily computer. I know one member of my team found one hole a few years ago and reported it to one of the developers and it was fixed quickly (and they were properly credited for it). I know there are holes in the system, like any system, and they need to be found. And unfortunately, the only ones working on finding anything are more interested in the sensationalism than anything else.

Unacceptable

[Ngarrang]

It is as if the fanatics actually believed their OS was so secure it had no security holes.

Re:So this "security researcher" cannot even keep

[stubear]

You're assuming he hosts his own blog and you know what they say about assuming. Beyond that, why is his message less credible? if he can prove the worm works, the message is still the same, even if his blog is hacked. Perhaps the person responsible for hacking his blog is simply a much better hacker? There are so many variables to consider that your comment seems ridiculous when you even begin to look at even a tiny fraction of them.

Wait...

[whisper_jeff]

Wait, so someone who claims, without providing proof, that they found/created a vulnerability in an operating system is now claiming to have received death threats and claiming that their blog was hacked? Again, without providing any real proof?

Uh, yeah. Count me skeptical.

Can anyone say "attention whore."

Cognitive dissonance

[manekineko2]

Cognitive dissonance is truly a funny thing. It's fascinating the lengths the human brain will go to in order to protect its version of reality.

Re:Now we know

[Sponge Bath]

I wish they would apply this technique to spammers.

Re:Now we know

[cp.tar]

Security by malware author assassination?

Hey, if it works... I'm buying a Mac.

Unverified claims to support unverified claims

[argent]

Sheesh.

Now we have unverified claims of death threats to add credibility to unverified claims of worms attacking a deep flaw in mDNSresponder... a flaw so subtle that Apple wouldn't be able to fix it without the help of said anonymous researcher who's allegedly received death threats over it.

Now this could all be true, but then SCO could really have thousands of lines of Linux code copied from UNIX they're still hiding so they can bring it out in a dramatic eleventh-hour release and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

I don't doubt that there's flaws in mDNSresponder. I don't doubt that you could write a worm to exploit them. I don't doubt that Apple is capable of fixing one symptom of a flaw rather than the cause... they've done it before. But there's nothing new here... schemes like Rendozvous/Bonjour/Zeroconf and the superficially similar "Universal Plug and Play" in Windows are a compelling target for potential attacks and have been criticized in the past. They're not needed for the normal operation of the system, and should be disabled unless you actually know you need them and are on a known secure LAN ... and recipes and utilities for disabling both have been around for years.

But there is no way that any legitimate security professional would proceed in the manner that the people alleged to be involved in have been behaving over the past several months. The whole presentation of this affair seems almost designed to discredit the security community in the public eye.

Notify Apple, then release the details. There's no other ethical course of action.