Johnny Cache Breaks Silence On Wi-Fi Exploit 288
Joe Barr writes, "Johnny Cache — aka Jon Ellch — is chafing under the cone of silence placed over him and co-presenter Dave Maynor about the Wi-Fi exploit they presented at Black Hat and DEFCON last month. So he has finally broken his silence on NewsForge in hopes of ending the personal attacks coming from what he implies is a smear campaign started by Apple." (Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.)
Johhny Cache writes, "If you're going to post a news story that is a rehash of my post to a mailing list, I would much prefer it if people actaully just read the post in its entirety."
Johhny Cache writes, "If you're going to post a news story that is a rehash of my post to a mailing list, I would much prefer it if people actaully just read the post in its entirety."
So..? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Implies" my fanny. He says it right out. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Implies" my fanny. He says it right out. (Score:1, Interesting)
Riiiiiiighhht.
Puleeeze.
It took all of 2 paragraphs to go ad hominem... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the way to prove your point.
As someone said, show this on a "bog standard" Mac from and I'll pay attention.
Honestly weird (Score:2, Interesting)
- how can a driver have the same bug on windows and macos x?
- why use this stupid external card? what are the chances it did have the same chipset as the internal one?
- and odds are the bug is a buffer overrun... does it take a SO LONG for apple to fix a stupid memory overrun?
That story won't finish well foro someone. The smoke screen is too thick. Either:
- This guy did overrate some minor problem in a misleading way for Apple laptops. Oh.. a third party driver with a bug. Or it's Apple driver with only a thirdparty card. In that case, he's discredited in the domain of security for the rest of his life.
- Apple did really pressure him (as he tends to hint). They're then not only legal jackasses (we know that already) but also incompetent to fix a bug (and that suprises me). In that case the company he's discredited in the domain of security for a while, and they can quit the "virus ads.. mac is secure" for a while.
Future will tell.
Re:"Implies" my fanny. He says it right out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple probably looked at these guys and laughed. </blockquote>
Silly rabbit! What the author is inplying, very transparently, is that they found an exploit in the Apple driver that is very similiar to the one in Intel's driver.
Due to his NDA with his company he can't say what he might know about Apple's driver, but he can certainly point out a similar bug and exploit with a similar Intel driver and let you infer what you will... namely that a very similar bug exists in the Apple driver.
Now, whether that's true or not... that's another story.
Apple threw dirt at him? (Score:4, Interesting)
before they only threw dirt to make him look unreliable
Point me to the link where Apple threw dirt at him.
There are plenty of bloggers who did the research on their own and asked the right kind of questions, but I've never seen anything from Apple attacking him. Maybe you're referring to Apple pointing out [macworld.com] that he used a third party USB device and didn't disclose any info to Apple about the exploit? I wouldn't exactly call that throwing dirt.
Re:"Implies" my fanny. He says it right out. (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps to you. To others, it's "blatantly obvious" that he has some weird issue with Apple and enjoys spreading FUD. His "clarification" provides no support either way.
He states that the ONLY reason he's saying something now is because he's talking about Intels drivers, not Apples
Or maybe that's all he actually has an exploit for. I don't know, and neither do you.
Re:Really Now! (Score:1, Interesting)
Fame? Or as they said when they did the initial "hack" they didn't like the "Get a Mac" commercials from apple? He was hoping to get away with no one asking any hard questions and he lost the bet. Plain and simple.
It's not tech details, it's proving it works (Score:5, Interesting)
The article above states, "He also went on to explain that while the debate was centered in the Mac blogger community, it made no sense to discuss it because most of them wouldn't understand the explanation if he gave it, adding, "Since this conversation has moved into a venue of people who can actually grasp the details of this, I'm ready to start saying something." "
Thanks for the condescension! It's not necessary. I will note that no one sensible, including myself (over at wifinetnews.com) has asked for the code. Rather, we've asked for Maynor and Ellch to either state that they mislead Brian Krebs, that Apple lied when they stated the company wasn't presented with credible evidence, or that they have material that Krebs saw and Apple hadn't seen yet.
John Gruber did a face-off, not asking for the code, but asking for a simple demonstration with a $1,099 plus sales tax prize.
How does Gruber not understand the technical details when he isn't asking for them? He's asking for a black-box showdown.
Re:My question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the thorough lack of details and crummy reporting mixed with derogatory comments that makes it hard to discern if there is an exploit to speak of at all. I know I'd have nothing to worry about if the guys would have presented their exploit neutrally (without shit-flinging Mac users for "being smug"), been detailed in exactly what the target of the attack is (they can do that without revealing details on the exact nature of the exploit) and told us that they're working with Apple to resolve it (because I don't believe for a second that Apple would tell them to put a sock in it rather than work to fix the issue). You know, the way these things are done professionally. But perhaps it's too easy to cast blame, especially since a number of reporters aside from Ellch and his collaborator have been reporting different facts.
Re:Macjihad (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't about a perpetual motion machine or an entropy reducing device, or even P vs. NP or Riemann's Hypothesis. This is code. This isn't world changing. Bugs happen, then they get fixed. If they want to stay silent to dodge liability let them. If there is a bug it'll be patched, if there isn't they'll fade into obscurity.
Re:How is it "obvious" ? (Score:4, Interesting)
If he doesn't feel okay about releasing details until they've patched the driver that's one thing. But insinuating that the big bad lawyers have silenced you is quite another. The only circumstance I can think of where they could actually be legitimately silenced is: they are/were being paid to do pen testing for Apple, they submitted this bug, they blabbed about it at a conference when they were under a contractual NDA, they're now claiming they didn't say enough violate the NDA and are remaining mum until the rest of the details go public.
Given the nature of this scenario (i.e. that they'd have to have violated an NDA to wind up where they are insinuating they are now), I'm not overwhelmed with trust for the researchers who are positing this security hole's existence. On the other hand, I was led on and on by Apple waiting for them to release a patch for my earlier security issue that had a similar attack vector and security impact to this posited new security hole. If these researchers are actually waiting, we may all have to sit around for a good long while before the proof is actually shown.
This dilemma is more evidence of why full disclosure [wikipedia.org] is a good idea.
Exploit is in the centrino driver (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that for this exploit to work, the network needs to be active (ie: both cards need to be joined to a base station). Why? Because you can't send UDP packets to something with no IP address...unless they're blasting WiFi cards directly, which seems unlikely.
Re:So..? (Score:2, Interesting)
I updated the stipulations [daringfireball.net] to allow for an entire hour to delete the file on the desktop. If they want more time than that, I'd be willing to extend it.