Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 26th Mar 2009 20:51 UTC
Law and Order Winner of this and last year's PWN2OWN contest Charlie Miller made some bold statements last week, stating that Mac OS X is easier to exploit than Windows. In a new interview with Tom's Hardware, Miller explains that that doesn't mean users should avoid Mac OS X for security reasons. He also gives a little more insight into his winning exploits, and what exactly they do.
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You know what?
by Devils_Advocate on Fri 27th Mar 2009 02:20 UTC
Devils_Advocate
Member since:
2006-02-09

Phuhck Charlie Miller. He sits on a vulnerability for a year as a sure thing so he could win yet another prize and show off his '1337 sKiLs'. So he basically sat around on his ass for a year and did NOTHING.
"In neither case did I get root/admin access. That would have required additional vulnerabilities. However, just running as the user is still very bad,"
So you get into a box as a 'regular' unprivileged user and you expect to accomplish just what? How would you 'get root' on the box after sitting around for a year thinking that you had it all sewn up and you couldn't pull another vuln out of your hugely inflated ego. Maybe you're not as 'kEwL' as you think, Charlie. The only things that his 'uber-sploit' shows is that it's a bad idea for any software that connects to the 'intarwebs' to be integrated with the OS and that security 'researchers' like Charlie are egotistical mercenaries. Period.

RE: You know what?
by jabbotts on Fri 27th Mar 2009 15:30 in reply to "You know what?"
jabbotts Member since:
2007-09-06

I can't agree that sitting on a known vulnerability for a year was a good thing but I'd say his NSA history and education in math trumps most of us here.

But just to make sure, your security and research credentials would be...

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