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Two Trojans For Mac OS X
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "F-Secure is reporting that there are two new Mac OS X trojans. The first is just a proof-of-concept from the MacShadows people that takes advantage of the unpatched ARDAgent vulnerability to get root access when run by the user. The second relies on social engineering: it's a poker game that requests the user's password, claiming to have detected a 'corrupt preference file.' It then takes control of the computer. Now that the source of the proof-of-concept is publicly available, we can expect that future trojans won't just politely request your password."
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We go through this about twice a year with the same results every time. "Someone" releases a trojan, presumably as proof that Mac OS X has security holes. Then everyone gets whipped in a frenzy and ultimately no one is infected by the damn thing in the first place. Mac OS X does have its holes (some of which are quite unreasonable), but trying to scare the users (in to buying anti-virus software, perhaps?) gets tiring after a while. No one has yet to do anything that matters with these trojans and security vulnerabilities, the real troublemakers continue to target Windows.
Mac OS X's day will definitely come at some point, but if people keep crying wolf every time someone whips up a theoretical and entirely implausible situation, no one is going to believe the security community once some black-hat does finally decide to attack the Macs.
The ARDAgent vulnerability is pretty serious and stupid, but social engineering is not OS specific. The "poker game" could just as easily be implemented on Windows or Linux.
There is nothing that any OS can do to prevent trojans. (At least not without seriously limiting the functionality of legitimate programs.)
Slashdot's own summarry of the ARDAgent vulnerability included a "proof-of-concept" it is trivially easy to exploit and should be fixed ASAP.
There is no news here.
For crying out loud people, the poker game one is applicable to any system you want to code it on! What does this have to do with being a Mac OS X security hole? It would work on Linux, BSD, RandomOSMadeUpOnTheSpurOfTheMoment (Infinium labs).
It's F-Secure's business to cry wolf.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
More like warning that just because you live in a good neighbourhood, doesn't mean you should leave your door unlocked. Too many people who have Macs take the lax approach of "Well Macs don't get hacked so I don't have to worry." Ok well maybe they generally don't (though I've seen it happen due to immense user stupidity) but you should still assume that it can happen, and have security to prevent it.
I'm all about proactive security, not reactive. Don't wait until something is a problem, identify weaknesses and fix that shit BEFORE someone exploits it. If nobody ever tries, ok great. However if someone does, you are glad you set up security.
As I said it is the difference between living in a low crime neighbourhood and a high one. You live in a low crime neighbourhood and figure "Oh well there's no crime here, so I don't need to bother with a door lock or alarm." Ok, that's great right up until the criminals try, then you are screwed since you had no security. Well someone who lives in a high crime neighbourhood might have to put up with attempts more often but if they have their doors locked, windows barred, alarm on and so on it doesn't matter because their security stops it.
Computers are the same way. Just because you run a platform that isn't targeted much, doesn't mean you should just ignore security. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, then you are ready no matter what.
It is like backups. Backups are a waste of time and money when your system has always been reliable... Right up until the moment when it isn't and you lose all your shit. You hope you never need the backups, and most won't computers are pretty reliable, but you make them anyways just in case. You prepare for the worst, even if it is unlikely, so that if it hits you aren't screwed.
That is exactly what a trojan is!
A trojan is a piece of software that appears to be benign or otherwise safe or desirable, but in fact is malign. It may or may not also act as advertised.
A virus is a piece of software that piggy-backs on other executables, "infecting" them with its own code and modifying them so that when they are launched, the virus code is also run. They spread by searching for and infecting other executables on the machine.
A worm is self-propagating, and does not require user intervention. It actively seeks out and exploits a given vulnerability or vulnerabilities, using them to covertly gain access to the machine.
Of the three broad types of malware, the only one that does not require the user to manually run it is a worm.
And if a program requests the root password and the user gives it, is this the OS's fault?
No, of course not - but you'd be amazed at the number of people who blame Windows even for such social engineering tricks, or believe that if we only all switched to Linux malware would be a thing of the past. The weakest link in any computer system is the user, and there's little or nothing an OS can do to protect itself from a naive or malicious user armed with the root/admin password. While this is a non-story, it does at least demonstrate that the same is true of other OSes than Windows.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This exploit is done via AppleScript and the Apple Remote Desktop Agent, which should hopefully give you some kind of hint as to why this particular issue is not going to be a problem on Linux.
OSX is certified yes, and presumably some of the basic shell commands will be exactly the same at a source level as in Linux, but in the Linux world patches are uploaded to repositories pretty quickly and users can then download updates immediately. Apple users (of which I am one) have to wait for Apple to release updates, unless they compile everything themself. I don't know if there's an equivalent of apt-get for OSX, I haven't looked..
Then there's the fact that 99.99% (number pulled out of my ass obviously) of exploitable bugs will have already been patched in the common OS level commands by now simply because they are being used in so many different distros. Sure there is the odd high profile bug, I remember one a few weeks ago on /. about a bug in some file listing function, though I don't think it was actually a security risk as opposed to just an annoying bug.
which is totally what she said