Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 28th Mar 2008 20:39 UTC, submitted by irbis
"An Apple Mac was the first victim in a hacker shoot-out to determine which operating system is the most secure. A former US National Security Agency employee has trousered USD 10000 for breaking into a MacBook Air at CanSecWest security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest. The MacBook was lined up against Linux and Vista PCs - which have so far remained uncracked. Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but yesterday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organisers using the computers to do things like visit websites or open email messages. The MacBook was the only system to be hacked by Thursday. Miller didn't need much time. He quickly directed the contest's organisers to visit a website that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on. He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems." There is more bad news for Apple: "If you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple." Update: The contest is over. Vista got hacked using Adobe's Flash, Ubuntu was left standing.
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RE[4]: Comment by apoclypse
by sbergman27 on Sat 29th Mar 2008 17:09
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by apoclypse"
Member since:2005-07-24
It's simply not true that Ubuntu doesn't have a firewall enabled by default, it's called IPtables.
That would be a new feature of Hardy, then. I ran a Hardy development release for a while on my laptop a couple of months ago, and didn't notice. But I believe I did an in-place upgrade.
But as I indicated, there have never been any ports listening by default on an Ubuntu install. And so, as Spock would say, a difference which makes no difference is no difference.
Edited 2008-03-29 17:15 UTC
RE[5]: Comment by apoclypse
by SlackerJack on Sat 29th Mar 2008 17:23
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by apoclypse"
Member since:2005-11-12
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Member since:
2005-11-12
It's simply not true that Ubuntu doesn't have a firewall enabled by default, it's called IPtables. Hardy has all ports stealthed by default but I'm not sure about Gutsy. I just had all my ports scanned and they are all stealthed from 0 -1055 in a default hardy install.