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.

The Maceater Display

Sung to tune of Nelly Furtado's cover of Maneater

Everybody download me, me
Enter bogus key you start screaming
Come on coders what chu here for?
Move your files around like a psycho
Everybody get your forks to point around
All you crazy devs come on jump around
I want to see you all on your knees, knees
You either pay me or you can't have me!

Maceater, make your drive blow
Make your folder go
Make you want all, of his code
He's a maceater
make you buy apps
make you kill files
make you run, far far away
Maceater, make your drive blow
Make your folder go
Make you want all, of his code
He's a maceater
make you buy apps
make you kill files
Wish you never ever met him at all!

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.