Monday, 25 September 2006

Apple Patches Critical Wi-Fi Security Holes

Apple has patched a security hole in its WiFi driver, despite disputing its existence last month. A security and AirPort update for Mac OS X fixes holes found in the company's wireless drivers by a researcher at SecureWorks. Despite claiming that the researcher was wrong and the drivers were not in any way vulnerable, the patch covers the self-same problem.

The company however, changed its stance and said, “They did not supply us with any information to allow us to identify a specific problem, so we initiated an internal audit". An Apple spokesman continued, "Today's update pre-emptively 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."

SecureWorks researcher David Maynor and 'Johnny Cache' demonstrated the vulnerability where a hole in Apple's MacBook wireless software driver allows a hacker to take control of the machine at the Black Hat conference in August.
Two of the three patches affect Intel-based Mac mini, MacBook, and MacBook Pro systems, while the third impacts all other Mac models, including older machines running the PowerPC processor.