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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."
Apple is finally catching up with BSD, Linux and Vista!
If only this broke bootcamp compatibility - then they'd really prevent viruses.
From the changelog:
It sounds like a high-level player finally decided to take on Exchange. My biggest questions: are there Windows programs that support these features via CalDAV, and is there a CalDAV server in FreeBSD's ports?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Even Vista has a not-completely-broken implementation of ASLR. Linux, of course, has been doing it for years...
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
To give you closeted folk an excuse to talk about your feelings in public.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Because the Macintosh is the Gay Computer.
Why bother.
All measures like this are just bandaids and may in fact open up more holes because it adds complexity to an already complex beast.
There is just no way to do this in software. The future is going to be implementing these types of features in well proven hardware. Things like the no-execute bit, virtualization extensions and such are steps in the right direction but eventually I think we will see some really good security measures put into hardware.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
The OS knows where it's bits and pieces are and anyone using published API's will be fine; it's rather transparent to the programmer. Where you'll run afoul is if you are trying to directly access a 'known' code entry point illicitly, without going through the proper channels via the OS. This is why it is a step that can help prevent some types of attacks.
It's still a bandaid though, just as it is in every other OS that's implemented it (pretty much everything OTHER than OS X has a form of this already).
When I first started using Quark XPress 6.5 in Mac OS X here at my new job, it took a while to work out the kinks for a rather complex project (doing layout for a journal w/ a 24 hr. turn-around), to the point that I actually put up a ``crash log'' outside of my cubicle, so that people could gauge my mood before entering. It's been a year now, and while I've gotten the project in question worked out (had to train myself _never_ to undo re-sizing a text box &c.), the totals might be interesting to people:
2006:
Quark XPress: 207 crashes (as many as 9 per day)
Adobe Illustrator: 25
InDesign: 35
PhotoShop: 15
Acrobat: 65
Microsoft Word: 23
Macromedia FreeHand: 9
Mac OS X: 14 (this includes Mac OS X apps like Mail.app and Safari.app)
The totals for this year are a bit more reasonable --- Quark XPress v6.5: 26, v7: 46 (I had to move the afore-mentioned journal over to Quark 7 after a re-design and that involved a new set of things to work-around) --- but I find Mac OS X overall reliable and workable as an environment (thought not as nice, consistent and synergistic as NeXTstep).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
When mac software crashes it usually just vanishes, with no user feedback at all. When the OS crashes it blackscreens (like, say, plugging in a firewire drive into Tiger, which they *still* haven't fixed) but I wouldn't say the information it gives is useful at all.. about as useful as a bluescreen.
Then there's the spinning beachball of death crashes which are a sore point with me.. they happen every time it decides it can't access a network resource* and the only way out is to pull the power cord (since if finder is dead you can't even power off or run the kill application). Got rather sick of doing that last night...
* Which happens rather a lot if you decide to use NFS. NFS under Tiger is broken on intel macs but works OK on ppc macs.. same OS version (allegedly), same NFS share, even the same damned cables.. different result every time.
There is a trend emerging, ever so slowly... It used to be Mac users attacking Windows users... More and more I'm starting to hear Windows users attacking Mac users. Fortunately, so long as the argument is "Mac is gay," I don't really feel like Mac users need to bother responding. Linux I respect, though... because once I'm in the command line, it's just like OS X. (ducks)
Music - www.richardmac.com
"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.
Good post. Privilege enforcement in hardware is going to be much harder to crack than various obfuscation schemes in software, which in the end are sort of like a spread-spectrum technique to reduce the signal level of your software deficiencies by spreading them out over the address space.
You be glad to read that Leopard makes connecting to network shares a threaded operation, so the spinning beachballs in finder related to this issue should be far fewer. In theory.
I've never had any problems plugging a Firewire driving into a Mac. Sure that something's not dodgy at your end?
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
Folks,
Just FYI, the sandboxing in Leopard is not systrace. Systrace is vulnerable to race conditions -- see Robert Watson's paper "Exploiting Concurrency Vulnerabilities in System Call Wrappers". I asked him about this at WWDC, and he told me that Leopard's sandboxing is based on a different technology and is not vulnerable to the same attacks.
--Paul
Seems like you might have some issues - I plug firewire drives into Tiger systems multiple times per day and have never had a crash. And even if it did, you'd get the multi-lingual "please restart" screen - I haven't seen OSX do a black screen panic since 10.1 ...
...
Also, if applications are "just vanishing" on launch, you may have disabled the little popup that tells you the 'application quit, wrote a crash log, and would you like to reopen it?'
... or, an OS with popularity of BSD, the consistent feel of Linux, the security of a Windows, with the openness and price point of OSX. That's a pretty good description of Vista, actually."Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
When mac software crashes it usually just vanishes, with no user feedback at all. When the OS crashes it blackscreens (like, say, plugging in a firewire drive into Tiger, which they *still* haven't fixed) but I wouldn't say the information it gives is useful at all.. about as useful as a bluescreen.
Huh? When most Mac apps crash it produces that "The Application [ApplicationName] has quit unexpectedly" crashlog dialog box, where it shows you a trace and you can choose to type a friendly little note in and send it away to Apple. this thing.
I don't see it that frequently but I did find a pattern of actions that would repeatedly crash Aperture the other day, and it popped that thing up every time.
Don't know whether it only comes up for Apple applications or what (I don't think so; I remember getting it a few times when Vuescan crashed). Maybe it only comes up as a result of some types of faults, and not all of the fatal ones. But it seems to work fairly well for me.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Your analogy is completely confusing. Could you please rephrase it in the form of a car analogy? Thank you.
"It's still a bandaid though..."
Actually, I'd tend to view it as just one of a series of preventative measures that one takes in order to KEEP from getting sick. A band-aid is something you throw on AFTER you've been cut up.
And yes, we probably could do more, but not until people are willing to take a minor hit in performance in exchange for hardened security features and layers. Linux in particular tends to erupt in flame wars over just a 0.12% increase/decrease in scheduler performance. And Window's folk won't give up an extra half-frame in Quake...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It forgot where the memory went, mind you, but it's the thought that counts.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
ASLR - Hmm. 32, Male, Bristol - what's the R for these days? I can't keep up with the youngsters.
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