Screaming Apple Fanboy Idiots

There's good and bad.

Get It Try It

There's good and bad with screaming Apple fanboy idiots.

When David Maynor demonstrated his MacBook hack they went nuts. Their reaction became the big story - not the hack itself. When Charlie Miller announced an iPhone exploit they screamed 'FUD' and 'attention whore' and every foul name in the book. Again their rabid reaction - 'shoot first ask questions never' as Macworld put it - was a bigger story than the exploit itself.

And of course Lynn Fox scrambled The Dalrymple who got over 180,000 media headlines across the Internet in 24 hours claiming the iPhone was still secure.

Apple in the Worm

Apple still haven't patched the worst of the holes uncovered by MOAB including at least one really gaping really embarrassing design flaw. The on disk architecture of Tiger lets any intruder completely control the machine with no hacking required. All you do is run diskutil. No privilege escalation required.

That was MOAB #15, released on 15 January of this year. Yesterday was its eight month anniversary.

Of course the hole was open since before 15 January, but it's now been open eight months and one day since Apple officially were told of it.

No purchase necessary. Any code running in an admin account. Complete control. Root access. Eight months and one day.

Apple do nothing. And continue to do nothing.

It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superworm

Semantics. When you have nothing left - not a foot to stand on - you argue semantics. You argue a lot and you get everything caught in the semantics. It's not a worm, it's a trojan. It's not a trojan, it's a virus. It's not a virus, it's a worm.

The fact is that it's child's play to engineer a worm for OS X. It's child's play to propagate the worm to other computers, it's child's play to infect the targets, it's child's play to find the right attack vector.

The example used in The Hackers Handbook is deliberately simple: were it not the screaming fanboy idiots would be complaining people were giving away code that could corrupt their machines. Hold back on the good stuff and they boast no one can hurt them.

You Can't Hurt Me!

Send a fanboy into a ring with Mike Tyson and he'll boast Tyson can never touch him. When Tyson knocks him off his feet he'll boast Tyson can never win the fight. When Tyson knocks him unconscious and when he wakes he'll boast Tyson couldn't keep him unconscious forever.

When Oompa Loompa hit the screaming fanboy idiots first boasted they could never get hit. Then they got pissed and wanted the Oompa author strung up. Then they went into therapy and today strenuously deny there ever was a worm called Oompa Loompa in the first place.

Today they're the most secure operating system in the world again. Far surpassing IBM mainframe and Los Alamos systems. And Los Alamos don't have icons bouncing in the dock.

When the next worm hits they'll boast that only careless users got hit. When the next worm hits and causes more damage they'll boast that it still only infected a few hundred thousand computers. When the next worm hits they'll boast that it still didn't cause $5.5 billion in damages like the Love Bug worm did. When the next worm hits they'll boast that their worm only caused $5.49 billion in damages so they're still superior and worms are a fact of life and hit all computer systems.

When the next worm after that hits and causes even more damage they'll scream for revenge and forget there was a security issue in the first place. And when the dust settles they'll complain that no one ever warned them of the dangers so they could protect themselves in time.

There's good and bad with screaming Apple fanboy idiots.