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September 23, 2006
Apple: wireless security weasel
When security researchers claimed the Apple Macbook was vulnerable to wireless intrusions, Mac zealots predictably went ballistic, and Apple insisted that there was absolutely no evidence for such a despicable assault against their good name.
Funnily enough, Apple has just released wireless driver fixes, which would tend to suggest that there was evidence, after all.
What makes Apple's conduct in this affair even more weasel-like, is that it continues to refine its hair-splitting procedures:
"They did not supply us with any information to allow us to identify a specific problem, so we initiated an internal audit," Apple spokesman, Anuj Nayar, told Macworld. "Today's update preemptively strengthens our drivers against potential vulnerabilities, and while it addresses issues found internally by Apple, we are open to hearing from security researchers on how to improve security on the Mac."Open to hearing from security researchers? Apple reflects one of Steve Jobs' worst character flaws: an inability to accept the slightest criticism. The correct response, Mr Jobs, is to say thank you to the researchers who almost certainly knew that they would be subjected to abuse - death threats, for God's sake! - but still had the courage to raise the alarm.
And over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber goes through some fascinating intellectual contortions to avoid acknowledging that he lacks even the tiniest shred of objectivity. Maybe we should mount a class action to force him to take that word "daring" off the site.
Posted by cw at September 23, 2006 12:43 PM
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Comments
The update was for Powerpc based apple laptops only though, not macbooks.
Posted by: TinBane at September 28, 2006 12:32 PM
They weren't running the apple drivers though, were they? Which kind of makes their "Break into any apple claims" false, as in order to run malicious code on the macs as they claimed, they needed to be already running malicious code.
Posted by: TinBane at September 28, 2006 12:35 PM