Gone in 2 minutes: Mac gets hacked first in contest

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Friday, 28 March 2008

CanSecWest's PWN 2 OWN contest was won in 2 minutes -- after the rules were relaxed a bit -- as Charlie Miller hacked a MacBook Air

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
March 27, 2008
InfoWorld

It may be the quickest $10,000 Charlie Miller ever earned. [Front page...]

[Aedan]

Two minutes? I think 24 hours and two minutes might be more accurate!

[dsio]

Yea, was the second day, with relaxed rules.

Still flies in the face of ancient Apple scriptures though.

[Favu]

The changed rules makes that a lot easier, but I dare say that most windows computers can be compromised just as easily, if you where to visit a malicious website.

[Redroar]

No ones argues that a Windows (or a *nix) machine could just as easily be hacked if you were able to load something off of a website. It's more a matter of the fact that Mac people typically spout off "and it can't even get viruses" in there reasoning as to why OS X is sooooo superior to Windows.

There's always going to be a flaw somewhere, and someone clever enough to find it. Really, the fact is that with a good firewall, NAT, and other things, the 'push' model of hacking is practically eliminated. However, as long as there are people, there are people that will do naive, stupid things with there computers. No system that I know of is secure enough to survive an idiot.

[Aedan]

That's why there are OS X worms out there then.

Ok, technically there's a difference between viruses and worms. Viruses infect other program files on the same system by overwriting/modifying them. Worms infect systems by copying themselves from one system to another.

Are there any viruses for OS X? I dunno, but worms are generally worse.

[dsio]

I remember back when the Leap-A virus was news for being called the first OSX virus. Apple's official response was to redefine the term virus in such a way that allowed them to spin that it "was a trojan, and not a virus because it does not fit the technical definition of a virus".

This was because Trojan inspires images of men in mail skirts, while virus inspires images of gobbled up files.

I'm sure you have a technical definition of every term, while I don't but I found that to be quite amusing. It somewhat reminds me of the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch.

"I can assure you sir this parrot is quite dead"

"No it isn't"

"It is deceased, it is a former parrot"

"No he isn't, he's just sleeping"

[Aedan]

Probably pining for the fjords...

It's definately not a Trojan horse either because A) It's not a horse; B) It's not from Troy; and C) A Trojan pretends to be a legitimate program, and Leap-A doesn't.

[dsio]

You have to admit, its pretty good marketing though =)

"SIR, I HAVE BEEN HACKED."

"Hacked? No, no no. That's just involuntary document colaboration"