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Safari/MacBook First To Fall At Pwn2Own 2011
recoiledsnake writes "A team of security researchers from the French pen-testing firm VUPEN successfully exploited a zero-day flaw in Apple's Safari browser to win this year's Pwn2Own hacker challenge. The hijacked machine was running a fully patched version of Mac OS X (64-bit). Bekrar's winning exploit did not even crash the browser after exploitation. Within five seconds of surfing to the rigged site, he successfully launched the calculator app and wrote a file on the disk without crashing the browser. Apple has just released Safari 5.0.4 and iOS 4.3 a few minutes before the Pwn2Own contest in an attempt to save face (a last minute patch for Chrome was also released) but failed."
I'm a Mac user and fortunately not a mindless one (honest, promise!). That Apple has been extremely lucky in not being overrun in exploited machines has more to do with the normal target area for exploiters being windows due to marketshare, but Macs have a big enough marketshare these days to make it worthwhile for crackers. I'm pretty sure that the time will come when Macs will be running dubious AV products like most Windows people do.
I think this is the important point. It doesn't matter that the Mac failed first, it matters that it failed at all. The order isn't important - all of the exploits took a small amount of time, and all were done just by making the machine visit a malicious site. Which one was tried first is not the important bit.
The most embarrassing thing for Apple is that OS X has included a mechanism for applying fine-grained sandboxes to applications since 10.5 which Safari doesn't use. It would only be a couple of weeks worth of work for an engineer to create a sandbox policy, test it, and ship it with Safari. For some reason, Apple has decided not to invest this effort.
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It may well be that other computers fall thereafter and I expect in those cases they fall from people who similarly have knowledge of those respective systems.
So basically it sounds like you're making excuses.
Actually the reason Safari went down first was because it was the first target. Followed by IE8 which also went down. The researcher who was going to go after Chrome never showed up and Firefox is next in line...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I'm not talking just about Apple - note that I was talking generally, and even specifically mentioned Google as an example - it's right there in my comment. I am talking about the contest as a whole, including all of the operating systems and browsers involved, but feel free to ignore my point and just have an Apple bash. After all, we are on slashdot.
Also, talking about this specific bug, it was an exploit in WebKit - so are you now saying that WebKit is an Apple product? After so many years of "Apple just took KHTML and rebranded it and claimed all the credit" posts on slashdot, now suddenly it *is* an Apple product? You can't have it both ways.
My original point was referring to all browsers and operating systems involved, both with OSS components and closed code.
It's called "Pwn2Own": the hackers win the machines they hack.
Everyone wants Macs. They hack them first. The other computers come down minutes later.
First one wins 15k$ cash. You are saying they risk this by not going after the easiest target first because they so desperately want a Mac?
But you have to understand the psychological aspect. I mean if you had paid twice as much for a brand and a look, found out that for your money you weren't getting much else, and watched the software you thought unhackable fail so miserably when you thought you were paying for security, you would be in denial too and rush to their defense. It's not Apple he is defending, it's his own feeling of foolishness that he's trying to cover up.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Slashdotters like such princibles as open source, patent-free technologies, and the right to do as you wish with hardware you buy even without the manufacturer's approval. They hate DRM and any anti-tamper measures.
That should read "Some Slashdotters..." there certainly isn't universal agreement on those. Particularly those who make a living by developing and selling software very often won't agree with that entire list.
Eh, let's see if your "logic" holds up. The winner wins $15,000 AND the machine they hack. So, what would a rational person do, hack the easiest in an attempt to win $15,000 AND a $2,000 laptop, or hack the hardest in an effort to (most likely) ONLY win the $2,000 laptop.
I am certain that a Mac fanboi would go straight for the "un-hackable" Apple iron, any rational person would go straight for the box he figured he could hack the fastest though. I think these guys are relatively rational.
It's funny how those of that *do* say those things about Macs are conveniently ignored on slashdot, or lumped in as one job lot with people who know nothing about security and claim that OS X is immune. Or even have our intelligence questioned for our choice of computing environment. It's really quite tiresome.
The specific bug that was exploited in this case is in WebKit, so it's a concern for any browser based on it - Apple or not. The purpose of the contest is PR, but does lead to exploits being exposed and patched (albeit held back by the people going for the prizes so they have something to deploy as soon as the contest begins - it took those guys a lot of work to get it to the stage where they could deploy it quickly - they could have disclosed their method some time ago [but the same is true for all the exploits used in this contest, on all of the platforms]).
The attack order of the machines really has little ultimate value in the end - the fact that security holes exist in the first place is the take home message. I hope OS X keeps getting attacked - the more exploits are found, the more get closed off. I am careful with my machine, but I welcome disclosure and patching of bugs.
The whole "which fell first" thing makes a huge assumption that simply isn't true. The assumption that all hardware/software combinations are available at the same time to all participants.
For example, whilst Safari and IE fell on day one, Firefox isn't scheduled to be available to anyone to try to hack till day two. Thus you can't say Safari is somehow less than Firefox.
Likewise you can't say that Safari is less than IE. It may well be that the person with a working exploit for Safari got a time slot to try it before the person with a working exploit for IE. After all, it's not as if they are actually finding the exploits at the competition. They're exploits they've spent weeks preparing.
Of course Apple has done more to eliminate DRM from Music than everyone on Slashdot combined.
Weird..