How Encrypted Binaries Work In Mac OS X 365
An anonymous reader writes "By now we know that OS X uses encrypted binaries for some critical apps like Dock, Finder and LoginWindow. Amit Singh explains the implementation of this protection scheme which makes use of the AES crypto algorithm and a special memory pager in Mach. The so called Do Not Steal Mac OS X (DSMOS) kernel extension helps along the way by decrypting things for the special pager when apps get executed. A funny thing is that if you print the pointer at address 0xFFFF1600 in your own app you get as output Apple's karma poem for crackers! According to the article there are 8 protected binaries in OSX including Rosetta and Spotlight meta data demon. Interestingly Apple's window server is NOT one of those."
Re:Oh look, we can scramble a binary. (Score:5, Funny)
"And I'm a Mac. My insides are all scrambled up. It protects me from dangerous crackers."
"All scrambled up?"
"Yep, that's right, my most important parts are very heavily scrambled."
"Does it hurt when you poop?"
"like you wouldn't believe"
Typo? (Score:2, Funny)
DSMOS - Do Steal Mac OS?
Re:Printing 0xFFFF1600 ? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm running 10.2.8 - quite old. Printing 0xFFFF1600 as a string with printf causes a seg. fault on my box.
well that's one hell of an Easter egg!
Re:Oh look, we can scramble a binary. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh look, we can scramble a binary. (Score:1, Funny)