When Gerbilling isn't fun enough

I have no idea what is in George Ou's stash, but it has to be some potent stuff if his latest rant on the infamous Apple WiFi Hoax is anything to go by.

Ou spouts a lot of bile about a supposed conspiracy hatched by Apple PR Lynn Fox to discredit the quasi-security researchers at the centre of the storm around their unproven MacBook hack.

Since his allegations have been specifically denied, it looks like the only collusion that is happening in this saga is to be found in the coordinated actions of Maynor, Krebs and Ou.
As far as I can tell, these are the only people who have been in regular contact and keep making mysterious references to some mystical and as yet unrevealed information that will magically prove them right.

Now there have been numerous requests for the hoaxers to come clean and just demonstrate the fraudulent exploit in public, but have so far failed in this simple task, preferring instead to obfuscate and misdirect.

Isn't it time the crows down by the south paddock fence just put up or shut up?

PS
Ou's original "Gerbils" comment has been deleted. At first I though that he was falling into the same propagandist habits that he was accusing Apple of, but it may be that the material was removed by ZDNet editors in response to complaints about the appropriateness of the references to Nazism.

Get some air

Its about time for Ryan Naraine to pull his head out of his orifice and stop spouting the brown stuff that helps the Apple trees flower early.

Asinine Ryan writes that:

"Apple’s marketing department gets a kick out of kicking sand in Microsoft’s eye on security but, truth be told, Apple has a long way to go to match Redmond’s seriousness around security."

What bollocks, and ugly hairy ones at that. As far as I can see there is a whole world of difference between writing software that is secure and being so used to producing a flawed operating system and applications that you have become expert at releasing fixes for your patches.

Naraine goes on to list five recommendations that spring to his mind. Considering the proximity of his head and his arse, its no wonder that these are all total crap.

He cites that Apple is in the unheard of Threatcode Hall of Shame, but fails to inform that Microsoft features in that site's bad books nearly three times as much as Apple does.

I'd much rather have Apple have security concerns permeate everything they do and be in the forefront of the minds of engineers who work to improve OS X everyday instead of think it is the domain of one special employee.

The real reason Naraine is sore at Apple lurks right at the end of his diatribe where he whines about not being given the time of day by Apple PR. If I was in Lynn Fox's shoes, I wouldn't waste any time on this hack either.

Since the latest update of OS X to version 10.4.9, my Mac feels doubly impregnable to attack and hardly a peep can be heard from the crows down by the south paddock fence.

Far from validating the methods of the loser Moabites, Apple has shown their approach to be entirely without merit. They have needlessly endangered the security of many Mac users in their selfish quest for celebrity.

I'm going to need a brace of barrels stacked next to my perch for emergency use.

I wish I was as eloquent

John Gruber at Daring Fireball has some great comments on the 60-second Wi-Fi Hoax. As more information comes to light it is increasingly clear that Maynor and partner are a bunch of pansy whiners. Technically adept, but whiners nonetheless, and nearly incoherent communicators to boot.

What these supposed security researchers did was akin to lobbing bricks at the windows of an abandoned factory and then informing the owners that glass was susceptible to breaking.

It is understandable that Apple responded as they did. After-all they did all the hard work in ensuring that Mac OS X remains invulnerable.

Restless crows

Those darn crows down by the south paddock fence have been kicking up a racket again. The squawking is still about the bogus wi-fi hack video demo delivered by David Maynor and co. at last year's BlackHat.

News from BlackHat on the demo given yesterday say that Maynor again failed to "hi-jack" the unpatched MacBook he used, barely managing to cause a crash.

Maynor still has no proof to backup his claims that this bogus exploit will allow malicious code execution despite having a golden opportunity to show it actually being done.

He also continues to hide behind supposed restrictions on the use of email communications to prove his claims of being hard done by by that minx Lynn Fox from Apple PR.

As far I'm concerned the only thing that David Maynor has managed to prove is that even unpatched Macs are impregnable to attack, and Mac OS X remains invulnerable. There is nothing to show Maynor and Ellich were not irresponsible, frauds, and shared nothing with Apple.

Surprizingly there is one thing that I partially agree with him about. David Maynor is quoted as saying that he "screwed up a little bit". I think he screwed up a whole lot and that he continues to do so.

I suppose it would be too much to ask that Maynor join HD Moore in finding Windows vulnerabilities, since he seems to have burnt all his bridges with Apple.

I better have a second keg of cider sent across to the Reality Distortion Field because I'm going to need something to drown out the pathetic cawing sure to come from the south paddock fence.

What, me worry?

Moabite Kevin Finisterre has been mouthing off to the BBC about how much he loves the mac community. You remember how he and his side-kick LMH, driven by purely altruistic motives, spent the month of January publishing so-called Apple Bugs to help the interweb botmasters try and add Macintoshes to the myriad of zombie machines posting spam and stealing personal information from online users.

Thankfully Mac OS X is invulnerable, and remains so, despite the desperate squawking from those crows down by the south paddock fence.

True to form, Finisterre doesn't take long to get to the point, he is really just after money. If the Moabites have made their point, there would be no need to solicit sponsors to continue their jihad against ordinary mac users, would there?

The ungodly proliferation of click and pay ads and the pitiful begging for money to buy a mac mini as January wore on didn't go unnoticed by many people following the failed Month of Apple Bugs.

Its a good thing that the BBC correspondent was not fooled by the pathetic Moabites, as the article notes two important things. First that:

"Many of the problems highlighted by Finisterre are security holes in applications, which are not related to viruses."

And also that:

"Mac experts have pointed out that none of the exploits have ever successfully been used to hijack an Apple computer."

It really is time these Moabites got serious about working to improve security, rather than flapping around calling self-promotional attention to themselves.

via Macuser

We can only hope

Two of the 20, that's right twenty security fixes released this month by Microsoft for Windows are as a result of vulnerabilities reported by HD Moore, the Director of Security Research at Breaking Point Systems.

You may remember Moore as a peripheral player in the bogus wifi exploit saga, and for his involvement in the Month of Kernel Bugs, as well as being a contributor to those layabout Moabites.

With any luck this points to at least one esteemed security researcher tiring of never finding any problems with Tiger and moving to look at an OS with enough flaws to keep him busy for the next couple of years. We can only hope that this is really the case.

Reports are also starting to surface of a serious security flaw in Vista's much vaunted User Access Control module. So much for Gates' most secure OS ever.

Where is Part Two?

Seb Janacek has 10 pretty lame things to say about Apple. I mean, really! Everyone knows that the lunatic fringe is the hair that keeps falling over the Moabite pwnies eyes whenever they have to deal with Lyn Fox.

Being great at what you do means you're allowed to be a little, ok a lot, arrogant. And Seb seems to have forgotten that Apple has the iPhone trademark outside of the US.

As for the Reality Distortion Field, that's just a pretty ordinary paddock next door to Artie MacStrawman's Apple Orchard. Nothing much out of the ordinary ever happens there, unless you've had one too many warm apple ciders while basking in the reflected glow of Steve's (pbuh) personality.

There's a response to the article here, but I'm interested to see what's due to be said if the second part detailing the good things about Apple ever comes out. I'm not holding my breath.

Feel the love

Douche, Complete Moron or Hero(?) All these words have been used to describe David Maynor, security researcher extraordinaire, who seems intent on continuing his self initiated security war against average mac users, despite repeatedly claiming to be an average mac user himself.

The Macalope has got a pretty comprehensive response to Maynor and an interesting discussion in the comments, with Maynor weighing in too.

I don't get why this guy keeps lobbing grenades in all directions and then feigning surprize when they get thrown back? Someone do him a favour and send a copy of his résumé across to Apple's PR department. We all know that that is really why he is mouthing off right now.

Pwnie says Apple is leakier than a sinking ship

In a pathetic rant about how he was supposedly done in by Apple over his bogus wi-fi hack, David Maynor says that "Apple apparently has more leaks than a sinking ship".

His paranoia is certainly well advanced, because when I think of Apple and information security, I think of the iPhone. Specifically I think of how the company managed to keep wraps on one of the most hyped products in a long time for over two years without a single leak. Doesn't look to me that Apple has any problems in this area.

Does David Maynor really believe the stuff he writes?

It was a good thing that I'd had a couple of ciders during the Superbowl, because it turned out I really needed them after reading the bullcrap spouted by David Maynor about the Newsweek interview with Bill Gates.

You remember David Maynor, he's the guy that wanted to stick a lit cigarette into my eye. I'm not buying his latest story about being misquoted either. Who would ever believe that anyone can hate the hilarious John Hodgeman and the cutesy-pie Justin Long? Loser.

Right off the bat Maynor's on about how Vista is supposedly more secure than Tiger 10.4.8, and goes on to make a paper evaluation of the supposedly advanced new security features in Vista.

This may be a worthwhile exercise for a "security consultant", but it is something I don't really care about, particularly when on the same blog site Maynor discusses George Ou's Vista voice recognition hack, and jokes about using it to disrupt presentations at the upcoming RSA meeting.

So here's the rub, Maynor's supposedly more secure Vista is already compromised. In contrast, after a month of onslaught by Maynor's Moabite friends, there are no reports of a similar situation with OS X.

But wait, the best is yet to come: Maynor then goes on to make the point that he is not attacking the average Mac user, just the "zealots" creating a false sense of security. Now the last time I looked, there is only one version of Tiger used by both "zealots" and other users alike, so it seems to me that he is trying to stick a lit cigarette in every OS X users' eye.

And to top it off, he's doing it in a way that helps out the bad guys, not the software vendors or the users he claims he is looking out for.

The only people who gain when vendors are not given advance notice of security issues so they can patch them are those other "security researchers" busy building spam botnets and keyloggers and backdoors to steal credit card and other personal details. So I certainly don't buy Maynor's bogus "name and shame" argument.

But none of this changes the fact that OS X is invulnerable to attack. There is still no viruses (virii?) and other malware for OS X out in the wild, and that is what really counts.

Maybe Maynor should stop moaning like a ratbag little kid about how he got "pwned" when Lynn Fox called him on his bogus wi-fi hack and show that he can not only go about finding security problems, but can also fix them.

It is easy to cut down a bunch a trees, but it is a totally different prospect to grow an orchard. I know what side I'm on, does Maynor?

I'm famous I tell ya

Vincent Ferrari thinks I'm famous! I don't know why, but it might be that I get a lot of people dropping by the 'lil old orchard threatening to stick a lit cigarette into my eye. What a bunch of losers. If they would just stay on the far side of the south paddock fence playing with their copies of Vista everything would be just fine.

He sure doesn't think much of the Moabites, labeling them a bunch of stupid horsecrap filled wannabes (wannabees?). Ouch! I couldn't have said it better myself.

If Vince ever finds himself down by Artie's Apple Orchard one day, there will be a cold pint of the best MacStrawman Cider waiting for him.

Well there is only a couple of hours left to the Superbowl kick-off and I can't wait to see what the rumoured Apple ad is going to be about. I'm hoping its going to be something like the classic "1984" one.
Maybe, just maybe its going be a big new product announcement. I'd just love to go out and buy a shiny new widescreen iPod (even if it is yellow and filled with Beatles classics), or better, get a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
I wonder if time will pass quicker if I stare directly into the sun?

Spitting Mad

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to kill someone and their dog and pee in their empty dead skull!

Bill Gates, the geek-in-chief over at rip-off artists deluxe Microsoft was interviewed in Newsweek claiming that Apple had copied Microsoft's ideas for Vista and used them in OS X while Microsoft was still busy 'perfecting' the security features in Vista.

We all know that's just a pile of steaming brown stuff that helps to make Apple trees flower early. Gates goes so far as to challenge anyone to create an exploit to take over Vista. Yeah, like its going to take long for that to happen. Even those huge black crows who like hanging out on the south paddock fence have been loading up on anti-spyware for their Windows PC's lately.

Bill even said that security guys are breaking the Mac every single day. That nearly made me lose my stuffing. Everyone knows that the Mac is invulnerable to attack.
Anyway those Moabites proved nothing. They should know better than to mess around with the chosen users. Don't they ever learn? Don't they remember what happened the last time they tried something like this?