Apple Adds Memory Randomization To Leopard

.mack notes a ZDNet blog outlining some of the security features added to OSX Leopard (10.5). Here's Apple's brief description of all 11 new security features. "Apple has announced plans to add code-scrambling diversity to Mac OS X Leopard, a move aimed at making the operating system more resilient to virus and worm attacks. The security technology, known as ASLR (address space layout randomization), randomly arranges the positions of key data areas to prevent malware authors from predicting target addresses. Another new feature coming in Leopard is Sandboxing (systrace), which limits an application's access to the system by enforcing access policies for system calls."

Comments

Re:Why?

[tiocsti]

"Changing the memory address layout is roughly akin to doing home security by locking different doors on different nights, but always leaving one unlocked. The would-be burglar just has to try all the doors to get in. Doing this kind of thing is trivial on a computer."

Yes, it's just like that, except you have millions of doors, and a intruder can only try to open one door per night, and the unlocked door changes randomly every night.

"People really need to stop adding these kinds of things that increase complexity and do not address the real issue, which in this case is access to the memory space of another application without some sort of credential or approval. When the real problem is addressed, this overly complex and fundamentally useless random memory address layout 'feature' will be left in to cause bugs and complexity forever."

This has nothing to do with access to the memory space of another application.