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Posted on 03/07/2006 10:46:02 AM PST by anonymous_user
Claims of Mac OS X being hacked in under 30 minutes are not quite what they seem, according to Dave Schroeder, Senior Systems Engineer at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
A recent ZDNet article told the story of a Swedish man who setup his Mac mini as a server and invited people to try to break into the system and gain root control. Having root control of a computer allows you do install applications, move or delete files.
Within hours of the challenge going live, it was over as a hacker gained root control of the Mac mini. However, Schroeder says there are some facts that were not made clear in the article that contributed to the hacker being able to gain access to the computer.
Anyone that wanted to hack the machine was given access to the machine through a local account (which could be accessed via SSH), so the Mac mini wasn’t hacked from outside — root access was actually gained from a local user account.
“That is a huge distinction,” said Schroeder.
(Excerpt) Read more at macworld.com ...
ping?
duplicate thread.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
It's more like they allowed allowed someone to walk around on the lawn and they broke into what was supposed to be a secure facility.
Kind of like hiring a janitor for a nuclear power plant without doing a background check.
Followup on a similar thread.
Not really a followup. All this is discussed on the existing thread.
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Like the early Seinfeld episode where Jerry's house is robbed when Kramer leaves the door open. "No, I invested in the deadbolt. It is the best deadbolt on the market and really has only one design flaw. The door must be CLOSED!"
Kind of like "breaking into a house from the inside".
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