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Apple Hires Former OLPC Security Director
imamac writes "It seems Apple is seeking to beef up security by hiring Ivan Krstic, the one-time director of security architecture at One Laptop per Child. 'Krstic, a well-respected innovator who designed the Bitfrost security specification for the OLPC initiative, joined Cupertino this week and will work on core OS security. His hiring comes at a crucial time for a company that ties security to its marketing campaigns despite public knowledge that it's rather trivial to launch exploits against the Mac.'"
So trivial in fact to launch an exploit on the Mac, that there's only one in the wild - and that's a trojan in a pirated application.
I guess the challenge of the PC ecosystem is what draws in the thousands of viruses and malware applications they get.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From what was meant to be one of the cheapest available laptops, to Apple?!
Bipolar much?
The only vowels in his first and last name? I and A.
"His hiring comes at a crucial time for a company that ties security to its marketing campaigns despite public knowledge that it's rather trivial to launch exploits against the Mac."
Public knowledge? Public knowledge? I doubt the "public" really thinks it's trivial to launch an exploit against the PC.
I feel like I just listened to a 5 year old arguing to another 5 year old... "EVERYONE knows that YOUR operating system IS STOOOPED."
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
The relevance of the article is that Apple are beginning to close up their back doors, which is amazing and shows restraint on their part.
What's next, marketing to straight people?
Maybe Apple should hire a new SQA/QA director?
Apparently they think now might be a good time to start battening down the hatches. They don't want to make mistakes like they did with the iPhone. Who seriously leaves a JTAG enabled and on the board of a production phone?
Look what this crisis is causing: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110388976453
Let's see here. The guy that invented a good security system (nerd) is hired by a large corporation (news). So far we have nerd and news covered. Now let's see, how does this matter? As macs gain popularity they also garner the interest of people looking to make exploits for them. Apple is trying to head off the tide a little so they can still market as being more secure than their main competitor. Personally I'm a Freebsd/Linux fan, but for all the mac users out there I think that it matters. So there you have it, News for Nerds, Stuff that matters. Or maybe News about a Nerd, Stuff that Matters.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Prediction:
This thread will soon devolve into a flaming argument between Apple Fanbois and Apple FanBoi bashers.
I am so tired of both sides arguing about Apple that I wish Slashdot would just remove the Apple section from the site.
let the games begin
Apple execs have put down their glasses of marketing Kool-Aid and joined the real world. They're obviously trying to get out ahead of the potential security holes in their OS, and they recognize that, despite what the fanbois will say, OSX is just as vulnerable as most other topics. Luckily for Mac users, none of the system crackers seem to care about gay porn or graphic design files.
It's not public knowledge, and the only exploit going around recently was one you had to download in a pirated application. Nice little troll slip in the summary there.
The Bitfrost system developed for OLPC (which is, AFAIK, completely open) is a comprehensive approach to security, data reliability, theft deterrence, and centralized management of computer systems designed for what amount to massive enterprises with extremely non-technical users.
Apple picking up the designer of that system could be seen as an indication of directions they may take in the future. Its "News for Nerds" even if its not entirely clear, obviously, how much it will turn out to be "Stuff that matters".
When the competition is Windows, you don't need to be Marcus Ranum or Bruce Schnier to stroll over the hurdles... with crutches.
Ivan is a genius! He's an engaging speaker who really knows his stuff. Kudos to apple.
Specialized security system, which can be easily evaded by replacing the kernel. kexec() is built into those kernels (I've raised this a few times, I don't think anyone cared) and last I checked (which was several months ago, mind you) it worked if you were root (trivial, no root password). The laptop's refusal to boot an unsigned kernel can easily be handled by an init script that kload()s a new kernel and kexec()s; the software mechanisms in place to protect the laptop are now moot. This is, of course, a simple implementation bug elsewhere, not a specific weakness of the security system itself.
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You're right, the number of exploits doesn't necessarily mean it's a more secure system, but the fact that (as you say) there aren't a proportionate amount to the size of the userbase does seem to imply decent security.
John Gruber had a good statement on this earlier today:
Security is about technical measures, like the strength of the locks on your doors and windows. Safety is about the likelihood that you'll actually suffer from some sort of attack. Microsoft has in fact implemented more advanced security measures in Windows than Apple has in Mac OS X, but that's not surprising, because Windows is where nearly all the malware is.
But it rings untrue to most ears to claim that Apple is doing a bad job with regard to security. The evidence suggests that Mac OS X has been and remains secure enough to be safe, and safety is what real people actually care about.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/05/13/security-safety
Who seriously leaves a JTAG enabled and on the board of a production phone?
What real good does it do to lock down the JTAG, when you distribute firmware updates via the tubes?
Wow, look at me! I can perform a Boundary Scan, and I can dump out the (compiled) firmware (which I can also intercept during an OS sync)...
Disabling the JTAG interface (by blowing the Security bit on the Microcontroller, I assume) would do nothing at all to make the system more "secure".
uhhhhh......the more ground Apple covers and the more marketshare they gain the less trivial security becomes. I would fall just short of calling myself a "fanboy," but I'll be the first to stand up and admit that the Mac's obscurity has been one of its greatest assets. Uhhhhh...down with the Mac!!!(?!?)
How can threats from untrusted code (or vulnerabilities in trusted code) be able to exploit a JTAG header on the board of the device?
Unless, of course, you think that the owner of the device is somehow a "security threat"? I keep meeting people who think this, and I really don't understand it at all...
(actually, Krstic's Bitfrost system is *does* implement some local physical security, but that is to address a very specific threat: theft)
Cute. Does that mean PC defenders get to ignore all the computers that have been infected by trojans too?
Sort of, I would excuse all of the pirated stuff or things that get in by installing codecs to watch that "Special video". It's stuff that is only going to target a small percentage of users (unless you feel like claiming more PC users pirate stuff which may or may not be true).
Of course PC's also have categories of malware that act as desirable applications from the user to download over the web, and then of course there are thing things like attacks against open ports that we'll not ever see on the Mac (since no ports are open by default to attack so it's a poor vector) and there are no Safari exploits in the wild to install malware like there are IE exploits (though of course that is possible, there just are none).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The malware industry has barriers to entry just like anything else, until we can make $x it's not worth any investment. OSX user base isn't big enough to generate $x yet.
Price out botnets of a few hundred thousand nodes. Now figure there are 20-30 macs around, which are to some degree homogenous systems and thus in theory easier to target.
Your argument goes straight to hell. When the number of intel macs in peoples homes crossed about five million, the "user base" argument went straight to hell from both a technical and financial sense.
So how come no attacks to speak of? My vote is that the Russian Mafia all use macs, and they don't want to foul their own nest. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please keep the nomenclature correct, as it depicts the appropriate level of froth around the mouth.
Removal of the Apple section would sadly not help, as the Apple Hater is persistent and will jump in with negative Apple comments in any context.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This ain't the "old days".
The Mac Hacker's Handbook:
http://www.amazon.com/Mac-Hackers-Handbook-Charles-Miller/dp/0470395362
- which should be bought, read and placed on the self next to:
Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach:
http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Systems-Approach/dp/0321278542/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242357309&sr=1-1
Apple's security wasn't an accident, but then neither was Microsoft's - a real go-er.
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT3_UCm1A5I
Yes.
~hylas
These and other inconvenient truths of the malware "market" are ignored, universally, by the industry trade press, and a surprising number of "security experts". There were worms exploiting Microsoft SQL Server on web servers when Apache + any of several other db had as much or greater market share. There have been Linux malware.
(Some of the various examples are relevant for fair comparison only within a market segment, such as the "web server" market, considered separately since these are considered "high value" targets, for their ability to spread to potentially many desktop systems, or for the data they might contain. For example, Linux had a minority share of the web server market when it first became a malware target. Perhaps this makes the case too subtle for pundits and the trade press, but it's not too subtle for the malware authors.)
The market share argument might be a partial explanation, but it really cannot explain the entirety of the vacuum in the Mac OS X malware marketplace. It's been five years, and still no malware plague. How many versions, and how many years must pass, before the industry realizes that perhaps there is something to this Mac OS X thing?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Those people are still around, plenty of them, even though the most widely discussed malware is now part of profit seeking black market enterprises. Some of them are writing remote systems management code which puts Tivoli to shame. (e.g. Some of them are clearly bright enough to learn Objective C in a weekend, as they already know C, C++, C#, and x86 assembly) They are writing malware for Symbian, even though the statistics indicate that iPhone dominates the mobile web market. (Symbian has more browser instances on the planet, but they are not actually used by people to access the web, so you're not going to capture many passwords infecting those phones).
In fact, it's time to really start wondering: Where's the Mac OS X malware?
At some point we security experts must begin to consider the possibility that Mac OS X might be protected by more than it's niche market share.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Have you checked apples figures recently. They are the biggest PC maker in the world. That means they sell a HELL of a lot of PC's and because of OSX nature ALL with EXACTLY the same OS. Dell sells loads of different windows versions, even linux. Apple just OSX. Talk about a mono-culture.
I also see them more and more often in the wild. But they are to small a target.
Tell me this, whose credit card number would you rather have. A Apple users or a Dell users. (Dell user of course, the Apple user spend all his on his Mac :P)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Malware could trivially examine the email headers, determine which of your friends have Macs, and attach the Mac version of itself when sending email to them.
Malware could trivially fingerprint Macs, scan for vulnerable Mac ports, and send a custom Mac egg through the network connection. (Ed Skoudis described multi-payload worms in his encyclopedic Malware a few years ago)
So many people who think they know this stuff, and many of whom call themselves "security experts", and yet how don't even take the time to read the literature, study the history, or even take a programming class so they understand what can be done, and what's easy vs. what's hard.
tsk tsk.
And your parent poster was suggesting that taking over 1% of the Macs would create a very competitive botnet. He's right. You're wrong.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Who seriously leaves a JTAG enabled and on the board of a production phone?
Uh, like anybody that wants to be able to root cause the bonepile of RMA'd units?
Lots of devices have have at least an unpopulated JTAG header block. And anyone that knows what to do with it is going to have no problem soldering their own to it.
Anyway, that's not any kind of security "mistake." A JTAG port doesn't make the phone remotely exploitable.
Evidence suggests first zombie Mac botnet is active: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/04/evidence-suggests-first-zombie-mac-botnet-is-active.ars
(*sigh* I hate being the pedantic one...)
I guess the challenge of the Windows ecosystem is what draws in the thousands of viruses and malware applications they get.
I think I fixed that for you.
If by PC you mean x86-based computers not from Apple, then if you install OS X on a Dell box, it would suddenly become malware-ridden according to what you say, right?
And if it's not the operating system, what's the difference---with respect to malware---between an x86 running Ubuntu and an x86 running Ubuntu (one from Apple, one from Dell)?
The "Mac vs. PC" distinction is really about OS X vs. Windows.
Bitfrost is DRM. Open DRM, but DRM nonetheless. It could (is) used to prevent the installation of other OSes on the OLPC (among other things). Reverse that logic to get what Apple might be thinking about here - preventing their OS being installed on non-Apple systems.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
Man, I'm so old school I parsed the first two words "Apple Hires" as referring to the Apple II's HGR mode.
SLM
main() {1;}
Bitfrost is DRM... Apple might be thinking about here - preventing their OS being installed on non-Apple systems.
Bitfrost is a security suite including a working MAC implementation; one of the few in real world use. Since Apple introduced an MAC framework in Leopard, but applied it to only a small subset of applications, I'm guessing that's the most likely area for him to be working. Apple isn't losing significant money because of piracy of their OS but they are looking at threats to their very valuable brand from recent malware and security issues. Hopefully, Apple is pushing for a more comprehensive security strategy linking their ACLs to automated processes and a working UI.
Apple has hired a lot of people over the years. This guy will get to sit in at some meetings with the really smart people that are currently architecting OS X and his ideas will be considered. If he cannot convince people his ideas are important, his presence will have very little effect on what is shipped in the box. I bought an OLPC machine and disliked the security because it kept me from doing what I wanted with the machine I purchased. I have no reason to believe Apple is going to radically change the security methods in the operating system unless they can be absolutely sure it is the right way to go. They may not want to fix MAC OS if it isn't broken. The potential liability and Q/A overhead is very high. Let's see how long this guy stays around at his new job. If he doesn't walk on water, it will be hard to get the respect of the existing engineering staff. IMHO.
whine on fanboi