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The Story of a Simple and Dangerous OS X Kernel Bug

Posted by timothy on from the chink-in-the-armor dept.

RazvanM writes "At the beginning of this month the Mac OS X 10.5.8 closed a kernel vulnerability that lasted more than 4 years, covering all the 10.4 and (almost all) 10.5 Mac OS X releases. This article presents some twitter-size programs that trigger the bug. The mechanics are so simple that can be easily explained to anybody possessing some minimal knowledge about how operating systems works. Beside being a good educational example this is also a scary proof that very mature code can still be vulnerable in rather unsophisticated ways."

7 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. 4 fscking years by should_be_linear · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    no wonder for sotware lonely nerds living in parents basement are doing in their free time... oh wait...

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  2. Steve Jobs here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Listen, Jack! I will make my it my morning ritual to poop in your cereal and piss in your OJ you lying sack of worthless doorknobs! My OS is the best OS there is and nothing you say can change that!

    Yours,
    Steve "Got Me My Liver from a Chinese Convict" Jobs

  3. Re:But it's not Windows! by bonch · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Same could be said for Linux! Right? Right? Being open source makes it invulnerable?

  4. I'm a Mac by Overunderrated · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    So this means we can take those idiotic commercials off the air, right?

    1. Re:I'm a Mac by mwvdlee · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      http://www.google.nl/search?q=malware+mac says it all. Now get those ads off the air.

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  5. Re:But it's not Windows! by arbiter1 · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    With windows having most the market flaw's get found quick, with mac not having no where near as much and fact most people will go after the OS they have most chance to infect as many as possible, this is what will happen. There is probably a lot more nasty flaw's like this hidden in the Mac OS that are still not known. Kinda nice to knock these mac nut's down a peg.

  6. Re:Less vulnerabilities? Yeah, right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    LOL. Parsing the post above reveals the following summary:

    1. If you try to examine the problem from a quantitative point of view, you're obviously an idiot.

    2. Instead, listening to MY gut feeling, and believe that Windows is far more vulnerable. This makes you less of an idiot.

    It's this kind of informed debate at /. that truly blows my mind.