Not to get you MacBook owners alarmed or anything, but there’s a small chance that at any moment – maybe within the next 5 minutes - your laptop may suddenly become unresponsive and uncontrollable. Don’t be surprised if it starts doing odd things… very “hacker-like” things.
Well… ok… so you’re probably not at that much of a risk unless you’re camped out at the Black Hat security conference, chillin' 'til the break so you can grab some more free stuff. According to the Washington Post (now there's some underground cred), Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch and David Maynor gave a presentation today showing how a MacBook could be compromised in a minute or less.
One of the dangers of this type of attack is that a machine running a vulnerable wireless device driver could be subverted just by being turned on. The wireless devices in most laptops -- and indeed the Macbook targeted in this example -- are by default constantly broadcasting their presence to any network within range, and most are configured to automatically connect to any available wireless network.
But according to Maynor and Ellch, this attack can be carried out whether or not a vulnerable targeted laptop connects with a local wireless network. It is, they said, enough for a vulnerable machine to have its wireless card active for such an attack to be successful. That's a trivial demand, given that most wireless devices embedded in laptops these days are switched on by default and are configured to continuously seek out available wireless networks.
These guys are no Mac fans, and especially wanted to poke fun at “smug” Mac users who think they needn’t worry about security. But alas, there appears to be no honor even amongst hackers.
Maynor said he and his colleague opted in favor of a videotaped demonstration versus a live one because of the possibility that someone in the audience could intercept the traffic sent to a potentially live target and deconstruct the attack -- possibly to use the exploit in the wild against other Macbook users.
Update: It seems that the Washington Post article may have been making the situation seem a little worse than it was - in fact, they weren't exploiting the AirPort card at all, but another wireless adapter. See this article for more on the topic.
Recommended Comments