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Apple Hires Former OLPC Security Director

Posted by timothy on from the yes-but-get-the-screen-tech-too dept.

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.'"

5 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I am lost here . . . by caladine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  2. Re:I am lost here . . . by chuckymonkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:Ha by broken_chaos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Someone seems to be methodically modding down any comments that disagree with the submitter.

  4. Re:So trivial there's only one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If the marketshare argument was true then there wouldn't have been any viruses for pre-OSX Macs either. But there were; lots of them.
    There were also viruses for the Apple IIGS, hardly a market leader.
    That's a tired old troll you have there, sir.

  5. Re:I am lost here . . . by orospakr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)