The contest began with a couple of MacBooks which were fully patched with the latest 25 fixes from Apple. A bounty of $10,000 plus a new MacBook was the prize. The occasion was a security event being held in Vancover, British Columbia and two Mac nerds were in control. It took them 9 hours to crack the Mac using the Safari web browser and an actual zero-day exploit.
So what this mean? Not much really. Basically any operating system no matter who makes it can be hacked. The Macheads will cry that the computer nerds had to work very hard to find the exploit and that they could of done it on a Windows system a lot quicker. I would have to agree with that assumption.
But the fact does remain for the world to see, that no matter how secure one may tout ANY system, there are those who can break the code and gain access to any system.
But looking at this realistically, Apple still has to be credited for having a secure system when compared to Windows. But us Window users should not fret. We have the satisfaction of knowing that we have the ability to spend as much money as we want on security suites to protect our systems. What more can you ask? 🙂
More information on the Mac attack here.
Comments welcome.
PS New information has now surfaced which indicates that Firefox is also vulnerable as well.
[tags]mac, attack, apple, exploit, zero day, [/tags]