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Mac Hack Contest Redux
narramissic writes "Remember the controversial Mac hacking contest from last year's CanSecWest conference? No? Here's a refresher: Conference organizers challenged attendees to hack into a Macintosh laptop, with the successful hacker winning the computer and a cash prize. Winner Dino Dai Zovi found a QuickTime bug that allowed him to run unauthorized software on the Mac once the computer's browser was directed to a specially crafted Web page. Well, the contest is back again this year, but with a twist, says Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of CanSecWest: 'We're thinking of having a contest where we have Vista and OS X and Linux ... and see which one goes first.""
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=508230
preview button, my computer does't have any preview button
I'd make sure that each was installed to default configuration. No tweaking allowed.
Vista installed from DVD default/recommended choices where possible on installation screens. Same with Ubuntu, and Mac OS/X. Any deviations noted. Any extra software installed must be available on all three platforms.
Just to make it "fair".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The 386 it was installed on?
The Vista computer won't get hacked because nobody will want to take it home!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think it's obvious the nonsense that'll come out of this. People will say, x OS is more insecure than y and z because it fell first/so quickly. Regardless of the skewed skill/effort that went into breaking it.
This "twist" is bullshit.
I would have said that the challenge pretty much amounts to saying "The next OS we find a vulnerability for is the weakest". In the long term it is a meaningless piece of data. If we hear about a new exploit for any OS tomorrow it means nothing, you have to look at long term trends to find a correct answer.
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Vista installed from DVD default/recommended choices where possible on installation screens. Same with Ubuntu, and Mac OS/X. Any deviations noted. Any extra software installed must be available on all three platforms. Just to make it "fair".
When is the last time you left an OS in its default configuration?
A fair configuration is one in which all tested operating systems provide as identical as possible feature sets, including all the features the majority of people like to use. Like printer and file sharing, for example.
It's also not fair to include, for example, NoScript- that breaks a ton of websites out of the box until you whitelist sites. Likewise for not including Flash as part of the package. An even more relevant example: the necessary firewall rules to allow IM (and file transfers.)
Please help metamoderate.
We're thinking of having a contest where we have Vista and OS X and Linux ... and see which one goes first.
What I'd be most interested in is a survey of contestants as to their platform experience, and how focused they intend to be on attacking the different platforms. That part could be wildly unscientific, but could be interesting if everyone answers openly.
Couple that with some good logs of network activity, to see how focused attacks are on the various systems.
For example, it could turn out that nobody goes for the supposed low hanging fruit, and everyone tries to target the Mac...or an OpenBSD box, if they bring one. Etc.
Please help metamoderate.
The outcome would be dependent on whether or not the Vista machine has already booted up. If not, attacking the other 2 gives you a decent head-start.
There is already a trojan available for vista, however noone is infected because its not finished copying over the network yet.
liqbase
Who is operating each machine? I need their email addresses. I want to send them some programs, and my "hack" is that the programs will come with instructions to the operator: please execute this attachment.
My understanding is that for Windows, I just need to have the filename end with .exe. For MacOS, I need it to end with .dmg. For Linux, I need to train the user how to use chmod.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Ummm. OSX is just NeXTstep v5 (or 6 by now?), and NeXTstep is a flavor of BSD.
Please turn in your geek card on the way out.
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Sorry that's my fault, let me turn my sound off.