On a recent trip to the Apple Store in Regent Street London I noticed all their display machines were running Deep Freeze Mac by software vendor Faronics.
First off my gripe with this is that they are using a 3rd party product to secure their own computers. Come on guys (Apple Geniuses), it reflects poorly on Mac OS X’s built-in security, which is considerable, that they would rely on a foreign product for security.
Secondly it shows a lack of trust for us, the customers. In addition to the S.S. style security guards in theur black uniforms and the members of staff wearing Jobs outfits, blue jeans and black shirts, who are ready to pounce on any hapless kid who tries to plug his or her iPod or iPhone into one of their Macs (for shame!), now we have display machines which are allegedly bulletproofed from tampering by scarcely trusted customers.
From the blurb: “Deep Freeze Mac helps eliminate workstation damage and downtime by making computer configurations indestructible. Once Deep Freeze Mac is installed on a workstation, any changes made to the computer—regardless of whether they are accidental or malicious—are never permanent. Deep Freeze Mac provides immediate immunity from many of the problems that plague computers today—accidental system misconfiguration, malicious software activity, and incidental system degradation.”
Read the rest here
Do any other Apple Stores use this product?
Anybody know how to crack it? I booted an Apple Store mac into Single User Mode and ran ‘rm -rf *’ for several minutes, to no avail
MacHacks.TV has put together this security and privacy manual pdf for OS X. Although written for Tiger the majority of its content is relevant to Leopard too.
Please leave any comments you think useful or send feedback to machackstv [at] gmail.com
The other day when I went to the KisMAC site I was surprised to find the picture above. KisMAC is wireless security software capable of sniffing out access points, cracking the now notoriously weak WEP encryption algorithm and running dictionary attacks on WPA. It also supports GPS device integration and is thus the perfect wardriving tool for Mac users.
A German law, known as 202c (introduced in May 2007), prohibits manufacturing, programming, installing, or spreading software that has the primary goal of circumventing security measures is, which means that some security scanning and hacking tools might become illegal. KisMAC is one of many programs that has had to move out of Germany. In the case of KisMAC, the move was made to neighboring Switzerland.To quote the farewell mesage on www.kismac.de:”With the introduction of §202c German politicians proved their complete incompetence. Law in Germany: possession of child pornography – two years imprisonment. Distribution of security software is half as bad. Even worse politicians still believe in the successful ban of digital information, obviously not reckoning globalization. We are heading straight to a country I do not want to be living in.KisMAC will live on. Different people. Different country”
I share the author’s disappointment with Germany. I had thought it more sophisticated than others in its attitudes toward free speech and scientific advancement. Clearly times are a changin’. The next generation of German computer security professionals will find it much more difficult to practice their art since most of the tools they need to produce it will be illegal to use in Germany. Sadly it means they will be less well practiced at securing computers and the bad guys will find it even easier to ply their trade. The ‘bad guys’ will always use the best tool for the job and the ‘good guys’ must know these tools just s well in order to thwart them. Even white hats must occasionally sport a black hat. You must know your enemy to defeat him.
Categorizing this class of software as weaponry is no new thing (ironically it was first introduced as a result of the significant impact the German Enigma machine had in World War II and it is now the Germans who are feeling the brunt of it, some 60 years later). When Phil Zimmermann invented PGP (a strong form of email encryption) back in the 90′s and distributed it through the Net to Europe he was charged by the FBI for illegally exporting weapons and munitions. The case went on for many years and was eventually dropped, due in part to the fact that PGP was by then available from many different sources. The Internet is such a powerful method of distribution that once the cat is out of the bag it can never be put back in.
And so it is in 2008 KisMAC has moved to Switzerland. And even if it were illegal in Switzerland and every other country on earth the project would still exist and would be distributed through the decentralized genius of BitTorrent technology, the fruit of technological globalization.You can now find KisMAC at http://kismac.macpirate.ch/Enjoy!
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