I also don't think this indicates malicious intent. It's as likely that some collection of junior engineers who were tasked with something other than system security, simply invented something that was both insecure and obscure. This happens all the time. It takes a lot of extra time and code to engineer security and it's historically been one of the first things that product managers and senior management will toss out the door when the schedule inevitably becomes the gating factor. Hey, they fixed it. And you know, some Day One bugs are simply very very hard to fix when you find out years later that there's all this other code that depends on it...
Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
221–230 of 367 posts
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#222Objective-C's "null pointer dereferences doesn't crash" behaviour rears its ugly horrible head again. Programs crash for a reason! Crashing when faced with nonsense is a good thing! Let us not forget this.
I'm kind of surprised there's not a means (to my knowledge, at least) to crash/throw an exception upon sending a message to nil for people who want to better ensure their code doesn't have lurking issues like this. I suppose it'd have to be smart enough to filter out system frameworks to be useful, but I'd imagine that to be do-able.
There is a means to do that: http://ddeville.me/2013/06/ruby-like-nil-messaging-in-object...
I have a feeling it wouldn't work well in practice if you made the handler raise an exception. As the author notes, you're not the only one sending messages, and Cocoa will probably crash your program with a nil message send sooner or later. But you might be able to use it to find out where it's happening, at least.
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of issues? I've literally noticed no differences besides UI.
FWIW, 10.10.0 for me was perfect. 10.10.1 broke my wifi. Anytime the computer woke up from sleep, I'd have to reset the wifi card so it could find my access point. After 10.10.2 came out, I got my second-ever full computer lock-up. I've had the same OS image since 10.5 (migrated and upgraded multiple time, obviously) and this was the second time my computer required a hard reboot. And this was while watching a video…
> Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays.
FWIW the Signature series Wintel laptops sold through the Microsoft store are base Windows+driver builds, no crapware allowed.
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's model customer is one who upgrades often. If you want solid support for old products, stick with Microsoft, and accept that their products can be clunkier because of deliberate choices to maintain backwards-compatibility.
To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware. OS X has kinda gone the way of Chrome, with most users on the newest version.
on the "run well even on 5+ years old hardware" bit. Sure, the OS will boot and work, but that doesn't mean things will work well.
My late 2011 13-in MacBook Pro became unbearably slow after doing a clean upgrade to Mavericks. Only upgrading the memory to 8GB (which was not supported by Apple for that model) fixed the issue. Yosemite works, but looks like crap on anything without a retina display. Newer versions of iOS have a habit of making older phones become sluggish when compared with the same phone model running an older version of iOS.
I'm not expecting Microsoft-level backwards compatibility, but as someone that has a somewhat complex development environment having to get everything to work on a new version of the OS can take up to a week of tweaking.
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. Fair play. Research the manufacturer's policy if you're buying pre-built. If you build your own desktops, this is not an issue. >I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. When's the last time you actually installed dri…
>If you absolutely need to read a PDF, Foxit Reader is free, as in beer. You're actually proving his point : on Windows something as basic as reading PDFs (yes you "absolutely" need that in 2015) requires specific knowledge of obscure names like "Foxit Reader". I'm not even going into annotating that PDF or adding your signature to it then. The same goes for : an office suite, a file manager with decent previewing+sm…
In fairness to Windows (and I can't believe I'm defending it because I happen to hate the platform!), bundling software is exactly what got Microsoft into trouble in previous years (Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, Windows Defender, etc).
Hopefully the package manager in Windows 10 will offer up a happy medium between expected software being easily available, and 3rd parties not being pushed out of the market place.
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. Fair play. Research the manufacturer's policy if you're buying pre-built. If you build your own desktops, this is not an issue. >I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. When's the last time you actually installed dri…
>Fair play. Research the manufacturer's policy if you're buying pre-built. If you build your own desktops, this is not an issue. I can build my own desktop, but I can't build my own laptop. I use laptops exclusively for work. >When's the last time you actually installed drivers on a fresh Windows install? Less than year ago on my girlfriend's VAIO laptop, actually. Windows 7. >Microsoft has made progress on supportin…
For sensible PDF readers, see http://pdfreaders.org/
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware Unless your hardware has been made "incompatible" by Apple (not for any technical reason, but simply because they wish you'd buy new hardware).
What hardware have they dropped support for without a technical reason? To my knowledge, the only Intel Macs they've dropped support for are ones with 32-bit processors, 32-bit firmware (requiring a 32-bit kernel and drivers even if the processor is 64-bit), or really old GPUs that can't support recent versions of OpenGL.
Early 2009 X-Serve?
It has a quad-core Xeon processor.
[update]
I am wrong. It is the late 2008 X-Serve that won't upgrade ...
Specs: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP10?locale=en_US
Supported H/W:
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you absolutely need to read a PDF, Foxit Reader is free, as in beer. You're actually proving his point : on Windows something as basic as reading PDFs (yes you "absolutely" need that in 2015) requires specific knowledge of obscure names like "Foxit Reader". I'm not even going into annotating that PDF or adding your signature to it then. The same goes for : an office suite, a file manager with decent previewing+sm…
In fairness to Windows (and I can't believe I'm defending it because I happen to hate the platform!), bundling software is exactly what got Microsoft into trouble in previous years (Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, Windows Defender, etc). Hopefully the package manager in Windows 10 will offer up a happy medium between expected software being easily available, and 3rd parties not being pushed out of the market place.
> In fairness to Windows (and I can't believe I'm defending it because I happen to hate the platform!), bundling software is exactly what got Microsoft into trouble in previous years (Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, Windows Defender, etc).
Except that bundling itself is not what got Microsoft in trouble. Having a monopoly, and then taking a coordinated series of actions relating to conditions of sale, bundling, and other steps to extend that monopoly into other markets and to eliminate threats to the monopoly -- with evidence, including fairly explicit documentary evidence from senior decision-makers at Microsoft -- that that was the intent of the action is what got Microsoft in trouble.
They got in trouble under anti-monopoly laws, not anti-bundling laws.
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. Fair play. Research the manufacturer's policy if you're buying pre-built. If you build your own desktops, this is not an issue. >I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. When's the last time you actually installed dri…
>If you absolutely need to read a PDF, Foxit Reader is free, as in beer. You're actually proving his point : on Windows something as basic as reading PDFs (yes you "absolutely" need that in 2015) requires specific knowledge of obscure names like "Foxit Reader". I'm not even going into annotating that PDF or adding your signature to it then. The same goes for : an office suite, a file manager with decent previewing+sm…
Windows 8 comes with a basic PDF reader: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/reader-app-faq
Re: Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X
#230While this is a significant vulnerability, I don't think the article is correct when it calls it a 'backdoor.' The term backdoor typically implies something that was intentionally left to allow illicit access, and while this is a significant bug, I don't see anything to indicate that's the case here.
There's no way to tell for sure if something like this is intentional or not. Also, waiting to fix it until a researcher makes it public may have been intentional.
A function named "createFileWithContents" is clearly intentional - through its creator probably just hadn't realised the security implication, making this a negligent, rather than malicious, backdoor, not unlike default router passwords.