Mac OS X Sandbox Security Hole Uncovered

Gunkerty Jeb writes "Researchers at Core Security Technologies have uncovered a security hole that could allow someone to circumvent the application sandbox restrictions of Mac OS X. The report of the vulnerability, which affects Mac OS X 10.7x, 10.6x and 10.5x, follows Apple's announcement earlier this month that all applications submitted to the Mac App store must implement sandboxing as of March 1, 2012. Sandboxing, Apple has argued, limits the resources applications can access and makes it more difficult for malware to compromise systems. Researchers at Core however revealed Nov. 10 that they had warned Apple in September about a vulnerability in their sandboxing approach. According to Core's advisory, several of the default predefined sandbox profiles fail to 'properly limit all the available mechanisms.' As a result, the sandboxing restrictions can be circumvented through the use of Apple events."

Comments

Put off requiring sandboxing

[0racle]

Apple recently announced they were pushing back the requirement for sandboxing, originally the requirement was November. Maybe this is why.

Don't give up

[fyngyrz]

No. You don't have to trash your Mac. OS X 10.5.8, Leopard, has the following useful characteristics:

1) it allows 64-bit data, so apps written for it can process massive data sets when used with 64-bit capable processors;

2) it comes on optical media, and is both easily installed and duplicated;

3) it is beginning to receive support from the user community (as opposed to Apple) for the bugs Apple left in it; (console messages in error with cron operations, anyone? -- not anymore)

4) it supports a wider range of available drivers than either Snow Leopard or Lion (or presumably, any of their successors);

5) it supports PPC emulation, consequently doesn't obsolete all those years of software, as does Lion;

6) Apple updates for Leopard that don't implement the problems of Snow Leopard and Lion are available as files;

7) Most responsible developers still support Leopard (it's still used by ~30% of the installed base)

8) The more people use Leopard, the healthier the OS X software community will be

9) No sandboxing -- straight up access according to user permissions. Terrific resistance to non-privileged exploits; the usual vulnerabilities if you're gullible enough to install malware and give it access.

10) Available for PPC, so entire spectrum of Macs for many years are usable and available as a market. If it ain't broke... don't stop supporting it.

Speaking as a developer, my company is aiming straight at, and developing under, Leopard; though we do test under Snow Leopard and Lion. It's a shame to have to give up some of the API's we could otherwise use (no one here is interested in implementing features that only work under later OS versions), but clearly it's the right thing to do: unlike Apple, we're not inclined to leave users behind, which is the philosophy that clearly underlies 10.6 and later.

Leopard is kind of like Apple's version of XP, except without the built-in obsolescence of "activation." It'll work natively for many, many years yet and with the advent of VMs, probably decades after that. It is easily "Hackintoshable." And in the meantime, if enough people drag their feet, maybe even Apple can be made to "get the message" that it isn't OS X that needs to move in the direction of IOS... it's IOS that needs to move in the direction of OS X. You know, things like nested folders, apps that can work filesystem-wide, etc.