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from the a-hack-a-day-keeps-the-apple-away dept.
New security features such as Gatekeeper and XProtect are simple to bypass and gaining persistence on a Mac isn't much of a challenge:
Gatekeeper is one of the key technologies that Apple uses to prevent malware from running on OS X machines. It gives users the ability to restrict which applications can run on their machines by choosiing to only allow apps from the Mac App Store. With that setting in play, only signed, legitimate apps should be able to run on the machine. But Patrick Wardle, director of research at Synack, said that getting around that restriction is trivial.
"Gatekeeper doesn't verify an extra content in the apps. So if I can find an Apple-approved app and get it to load external content, when the user runs it, it will bypass Gatekeeper," Wardle said in a talk at the RSA Conference [in San Francisco] Thursday. "It only verifies the app bundle."
Backing up Gatekeeper is XProtect, Apple's anti-malware system for OS X. Malware isn't a massive problem for OSX, but there definitely are some well-known families out there, with more being created all the time, Wardle said. Getting past XProtect turns out to be just as simple as bypassing Gatekeeper. Wardle found that by simply recompiling a known piece of OS X malware, which changes the hash, he could get the malware past XProtect and execute it on the machine. Even simpler, he could just change the name of the malware, which also lets it sneak in under the fence.
More coverage, including pretty graphics, on ZDNet.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @03:16PM
As I write this, there are 7 comments posted to this story.
Five of them (that's over 70%!) have been modded down with ratings like:
As I read the comments, it became obvious that they were not as described by the rating. They were not trolling, and they were not off topic.
The "Disagree" mod makes little sense. It's not even a rating of the comment itself. It just expresses the opinion of one person: the mod. Even if thousands of people agree with a comment, but just one person (a mod) disagrees, then the comment is mislabeled.
The moderation here isn't helping highlight good comments. It's just suppressing good discussion. That's why I consider downmodding to be more harmful than it is good.
I think that downmodding needs to go. It clearly isn't helping, and just stifles discussion. If there's one thing a young site like this doesn't need, it's stifled discussion to retard its growth.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by t-3 on Saturday April 25 2015, @04:27PM
All of these comments are troll threads with nothing new and little worth reading. The mods match the quality.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday April 25 2015, @04:56PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @09:04PM
Systemd seems relevant in this case. The topic is OS security. Comparing Mac OS X to Linux is relevant.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Saturday April 25 2015, @09:11PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈