Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cult of Mac, Bad Apple, Apple
Editorial: Behind the MacBook "Hack"
The web has been on fire the past few days with news of a presentation given at the BlackHat computer security conference featuring the compromising a MacBook Pro by executing very low-level code on the drivers of a wireless card. Whether or not the exploit presented actually counts as hacking of a Macintosh (they used a third party wireless card) is not at issue in this post. What I think is more important is the fact that these guys chose to demonstrate the vulnerability on a Mac, instead of a Windows or Linux machine, which are also vulnerable to the exploit. The presenters cited the "Mac userbase aura of smugness on security" as their reason for choosing a Mac as their guinea pig.
Some readers might attribute this negative attitude toward Mac users as one held only by uninformed Windows users and malicious hackers, but that is far from the case. Many very intelligent and highly respected members of the tech community feel the same way. Some of them even used to love Macs.
Before pointing any fingers and making any accusations about who lost their mind when, I think we need to take a step back and examine our behavior.
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