Alleged OS X worm creator disappears

Tom (#13); I think it's more likely that these people are interested in personal gain and they don't care who bears the brunt.

As far as I know, the two examples that you gave are the only ones causing problems. There are plenty of security researchers that do find problems and they actually bother to tell Apple rather than do this public posturing. These two guys are outliers and should not be taken as representative of the whole.

I don't know why David Maynor would hack someone else's blog, there at least needs to be a better motive than that, so I don't buy that explaination. If he's really out to get Apple like you suggest, then why would he sabotage the efforts of someone else that's also supposedly out to get Apple, as you also suggest? While I don't think one has sabotaged the other, it would be for personal gain because of "stealing" the limelight, not because of an anti-Apple sentiment.

How dare we be so ungrateful for them trying to bring to us what we've been missing on our Macs? After all they did it from the goodness of their hearts! Don't you know a lot of people are holding off getting Macs because of lack of their favorite applications.. Malware!

I kid! ;)

He didn't disappear. Well, he did briefly, but that's because his blog was hacked. Supposedly by David Maynor (the same David Maynor involved in the MBP WiFi exploit last year), who denies it.

If you ask me, these security "researchers" who find vulnerabilities in Mac OS X are extremely unprofessional and childish. That includes Maynor, InfoSec Sellout, and the Month of Apple Bugs guys. They're basically just out there to give Apple some bad publicity and gain attention for themselves.

It's amazing how this guy has ZERO proof, then when the heat gets turned up he just disappears and some people want to somehow believe he is for real!

It's just hard for me to believe so many people are naive enough to think you can trust someone who refuses to provide any proof.

I guess when you blindly hate Apple you are willing to believe any negative Apple "news".

"has Infosec Sellout criticised Microsoft in the past?"

Yes, he has.

Quote:

"How about any issues Microsoft has fixed in Vista and not disclosed. We know they do it and even a couple "researchers" whom I picture as the "Dumb & Dumber" of vulnerability research agree ..."

Infosec Sellout seems to have a pretty low opinion of *all* the vendors - and of some other researchers into the bargain. He has described David Maynor as a "media whore", suggesting Maynor was making too much of the Safari 3 flaws in order to get attention.

Quote:

"Why is it breaking news that you can crash Safari and maybe two of these issues are exploitable. I am sorry readers but unless someone spells it out to them both Maynor and Ferris would not know if something is exploitable if it slapped them in the face."

Go to MacWorld, if you want to take a peek at some of his old posts before they were wiped. They've got links to a cached page.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/07/18/worm/index.php

The posts are stylistically interesting apart from anything else. The quotations I've seen reported recently read like something from a 13-year-old with learning difficulties, but these earlier ones are written in a fairly clear and fluent style. One can only speculate on whether this guy was hacked or whether he deliberately defaced his own site to throw people off the scent.

+1 for BS. The original blog post claiming the worm wasn't really believable, more filled with hot air than credible details.

So he created a worm, but wont tell Apple because he hasn't tested it yet? So it's just a theory and not in practice then? Why even announce something if it hasn't been tested?

Maybe this worm made the infected computers self-conscient and it killed its creator.

Anyone who calls their viral delivery packages "rape" is a moron of the very first water.

May be we ought to sic Valleywag on this hacker and out him ;P