Ex-NSA Researcher Claims That DLL-Style Attacks Work Just Fine On OS X 93
An anonymous reader writes Ex-NSA and NASA researcher Patrick Wardle claims to have developed a reliable technique of Shared Library replacement which renders Apple's OSX operating system just as vulnerable to exploitation as Windows has been (via its 'DLL' shared libraries) for years. Speaking at CanSecWest, Wardle explained that Apple's refusal to encrypt software downloads via its App Store allows an attacker on the same network to inject a malicious 'dylib' (shared library) without altering the hash of the legitimate-but-vulnerable software, thereby leaving the Developer ID signature intact. Wardle ran a crafted Python script on a typical Mac and discovered 150 dylib-dependent applications, including Apple's own Xcode developer environment — revealed last week by Edward Snowden to be a priority target for the NSA due to its ability to propagate compromised software.