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Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

news.com.au

1–10 of 56 posts

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#2
The article states that the website is back up but as of now 24/07 11:08GMT that is not the case.

This is terrible timing for me since I came back from travelling on Thursday and haven't been able to get on with working in iOS 7. I really wish Apple were able to provide us with more information on time-scales.

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#3

The article states that the website is back up but as of now 24/07 11:08GMT that is not the case. This is terrible timing for me since I came back from travelling on Thursday and haven't been able to get on with working in iOS 7. I really wish Apple were able to provide us with more information on time-scales.

Yeap, no dice. Still offline 7/24 7:23AM EST

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#4
The fact that the site is still down makes wonder what they're doing.

Provided that the hacker did report all the security bugs to Apple, one could suppose that it would only require of couple of days to fix the bugs, put the site back online, and start performing a full security audit along with massive code rewrite in parallel.

The only reason i see why they would still be offline, is that they instead decided to rewrite some crucial portion of the code from the ground up (which is what the email they sent the other day would suggest). But 1 week in emergency mode for a company like Apple really means rewriting TONS of code...

Anyone know the state of Objective-C on the server ? I really like that language now that it has ARC, and i wonder if apple is still using that technology on the server side

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#6

The article states that the website is back up but as of now 24/07 11:08GMT that is not the case. This is terrible timing for me since I came back from travelling on Thursday and haven't been able to get on with working in iOS 7. I really wish Apple were able to provide us with more information on time-scales.

[deleted]

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#7
post #4

The fact that the site is still down makes wonder what they're doing. Provided that the hacker did report all the security bugs to Apple, one could suppose that it would only require of couple of days to fix the bugs, put the site back online, and start performing a full security audit along with massive code rewrite in parallel. The only reason i see why they would still be offline, is that they instead decided to r…

The developer portal is written in WebObjects/Java.

And whilst I am sure they are using Project Wonder which wraps up a lot of the old WebObjects code there is still the fact that it is a deprecated technology.

And it's never just write some code and deploy in these situations. It will involve testers signing it off, performance testing, security testing, deployment etc. So all those parts add up. Plus there's no "Steve Jobs will fire you" threat breathing down your neck.

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#8
post #4

The fact that the site is still down makes wonder what they're doing. Provided that the hacker did report all the security bugs to Apple, one could suppose that it would only require of couple of days to fix the bugs, put the site back online, and start performing a full security audit along with massive code rewrite in parallel. The only reason i see why they would still be offline, is that they instead decided to r…

They certainly aren't using WebObjects for everything, so I can't imagine they are particularly happy with it. Little bits of it are PHP for example, like the file search on the main page:

    https://developer.apple.com/search/index.php?q=HN

Re: Ibrahim Balic breaks silence on hacking Apple developer site

#10

With the iOS 7 launch already on a tight schedule this is a disgrace for both Apple and developers trying to renovate their apps.

disgrace |disˈgrās| noun loss of reputation or respect, esp. as the result of a dishonorable action [ in sing. ] a person or thing regarded as shameful and unacceptable

How is it a disgrace? You're making it sound like Apple meant for this to happen, this could've happen to any companies.

Apple should not be portrayed to be perfect at everything, they're lead by humans who can make mistakes, just like everybody else.

Apple's fixing the problem, it is taking longer than they expected it to. Nothing shameful or unacceptable here, just a nature of technology and mistakes/bugs.

We do not know the full scale of the problem, media needs to stop acting like it's just 13 bugs reported by a hacker (sorry, if he wants to be a "security researcher", he could've acted like one). It is entirely possible that the 13 bugs was just a small scale of the problem and Apple've found more extensive problems that can't be fixed quickly.

iOS 7 can be delayed to make up for the loss of time developers need or the developers will have to delay their apps.

Stuff happens, we just have to rough it out, and move on.

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