Posted on 02/21/2014 5:51:18 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A major flaw in Apple Inc software for mobile devices could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, the company said in a Friday afternoon announcement.
If attackers have access to a user's network, such as by sharing the same unsecured wireless service offered by a restaurant, they could see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Gmail and Facebook, experts said.
"It's as bad as you could imagine, that's all I can say," said Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
> By that definition when was the last virus on a supported windows platform? Oh there are none!
Really now, for-q.
Windows is damn solid these days, but until Vista/7 such viruses were a regular feature of the landscape. If you read my pro-Windows posts on many other threads you’ll see I’ve been saying good things about Windows security for a long while.
But let’s not forget that XP is still on hundreds of millions of computers in use every day! When we talk about “Windows” those XP machines still count big time. And they’re not all patched, ya know.
Thanks for the info. Couldn’t find anything for mine, big screen mac, OS X 10.5.8.
I know its amazing an OS that is 10 years old is still being widely used...that’s impressive!
not similar in method, but similar in scope. It shows demonstrates a security tool used for more or less sandboxing apps on microsoft systems has been completely compromised.
You were never at risk, nor was any OSX user not on OSX Mavericks.
A Mac, like any computer that is permitted to install software, is vulnerable to user installed Trojans. But, Red in Blue PA, there are no successful self installing, self transmitting, self replicating OSX viruses, worm, or other malware that meets the definition of a computer virus. There have been various candidates put forward over the past sixteen years that claimed to be the "first OSX Mac virus" but none ever proved viable. They all failed for the same reason: lack of a viable vector. Most of the candidates failed because they required user involvement at some point in the process of replication, transmit ion, or installation, and were at best were mere Trojans Horse applications.
Currently there are approximately 50 known Trojan Horse applications that can affect OSX in seven distinct families in the wild, all of which OSX itself, without the assistance of any anti-virus software, will identify and warn the user if he attempts to download, install, or download any one or a variation of them. Apple is very quick in pushing out updates to the definition file when a new variant is found.
As it stands, Macs running OSX have never been infected by a virus. . . under the accepted and technical definition of a computer virus. It may happen someday, but we are still waiting for that day.
So an outside attacker can get your data or control your machine without user interaction? Or does the user have to install their app first? Also does this impact windows phone sandbox apps?
IF you want more details. I suggest you read the paper linked. That’s why I posted it here, so interested parties might locate information of interest. From the summaries, it looks like it means that their sandboxing is broken. I don’t run windows, so I don’t particularly care about the details.
I had a friend who had his pets trained so that when he called, "Here, kitty, kitty!" -- the dogs came a-running. And, when he whistled, and called, "Here, pup!" -- here came the cats.
The animals couldn't care less -- as long as dinner was there for them.
But -- it sure messed with people's heads!! LOL!
Thanks, Swordmaker
"10"?? Try 13 -- XP came out in 2001.
XP remains viable because it is very effective. It was the first widely used NT (non-DOS) Windows, and after Microsoft finally got the security tightened down enough that it was moderately safe to use, and people got used to it, it kicked serious ass in every market segment including embedded systems.
Vista coming out both late and lame made it inevitable that XP would live forever.
I fully expect that XP will remain a viable and significant presence in the Windows landscape for another 3-4 years at least, and will still be the OS in millions of embedded systems (kiosks, ATMs, displays, etc.) for another few years beyond that, until all the machines die of hardware rot.
A VERY impressive achievement.
That said, people really should be on Win7 now. The lack of security updates is a serious security issue for XP diehards.
when I rebooted - and it's still onscreen a day and a half later. I could click the "close" button the display offers - but would that delete the cause of the message - and if so, would it terminate a useful process? I honestly can't say that I can perceive any degradation in performance . . .
Can you shed any light?
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