MacBook Air knocked out quickly in CanSecWest contest

I agree with FD when he says "It amazes me how people say it won't happen to them as long as they don't click on a shady link."

Do you think rickrolling would be such a big phenomenon if most people knew what they were clicking on?

The downfall of many is their own arrogance. Making excuses for this incident and making it seem like it's no big deal just plays into Apple's hands. Why would they have to rush to fix this or improve their products if no one cares or wants to believe that a weakness has been exposed.

Let me say this, if Vista were hacked in 2 minutes, it would be a feather in our cap and we'd bring it up every chance we get to stick it to windows users.

It amazes me how people say it won't happen to them as long as they don't click on a shady link.

Get your head out of the sand. You honestly think this would only be deployed on some obscure unknown site? This code can be up on any site, forum, ...

Hack into a web server. Deploy the script on a page with the scoop on the next macbook pro or a supposed spy photo gallery of some secret upcoming product. Watch all the Mac heads visit. By the time they viewed the video, studied the photos, read the story, commented or whatever ... someone has gained access to their hard drive!

Wake up and smell the coffee.

The exploit was pre-coded by Miller, and two other co-workers from Independent Security Evaluators. It took several weeks to code, but isn't as headline grabbing as saying it fell in two minutes....

For hackers, I don't think doing the easiest hack just to get the money is the point. The mac would provide the most bragging rights and the best free computer, the Air. So I'm not surprised they went after that one first, but not because it was the easiest.
Who wants a Vista laptop as their prize, lol.

Get out of the Steve Jobs distortion field and see reality!!

IMHO, Apple only pays lip service to Security. Apple only cares that that the public still believes in the myth that Apple computers are more secure than other platforms. As this contest demonstrates, Macs are not that secure.

I do hope Apple starts to take security more seriously and starts patching more often and quickly. But when the Open Source community patches software used in OS X and Apple takes it sweet this time to incorporate this updated software into OS X, I am not that optimistic that Apple will change anytime soon. Pity.

The only real target? This is for a $10k prize. You don't go after the most difficult target. You go after the easiest one so you get the money.

The Mac was the only real target. The other systems will fall even
easier. This hack was made up a while ago, I'd bet.
I discuss it more here:
http://gregstechblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/macbook-air-hacked.html

It'll be interesting to see if this is something like a lib_tiff exploit, and not in any way related to OSX other than it uses the lib_tiff (Or whatever package has the flaw) library. Or if it's an issue directly with OSX and code Apple wrote.

So as long as I (a) don't use Safari, but instead run Camino, Firefox, Shiira, iCab, Opera or whatever, and (b) don't click sketchy links, I shouldn't have a problem?

You'll pardon me if I'm _not_ particularly disturbed.

So....does simply visiting the website cause the exploit in and of itself? Or is there some other action needed? Such as clicking "yes" or entering your sudo password?

And what does "take over" mean?

I haven't found an article that goes into detail on what actually happened.