In My World

Monday, 23 April 2007

David Maynor, regarding Friday’s CanSecWest Mac OS X exploit, writes:

Tom is right, brace your self for the flood of Mac faithfully [sic] posts about why this doesn’t count. I can hear John Gruber tapping away and silent sobbing in the distance…

In Maynor’s world, I called him on his bullshit regarding last summer’s MacBook Wi-Fi hack fiasco because I’m a member of the “Mac faithful”, a zealot who believes Macs are sprinkled with magic pixie dust that renders them invulnerable to security flaws, and who lashes out against anyone who claims otherwise.

In my world, I look for proof and evidence. Maynor and Ellch’s supposed MacBook Wi-Fi exploit? Still unproven. Dino Dai Zovi’s winning exploit in the CanSecWest contest? Proven. It’s that simple.

Nobody serious is downplaying this bug or claiming it doesn’t count. Of course it counts. It’s not the first such exploit against Mac OS X. It won’t be the last.

In Maynor’s world, Apple will issue legal threats against Dai Zovi; launch a scurrilous PR smear campaign against him simply for reporting a bug; claim the bug doesn’t actually exist; and then, months from now, fix it without giving him credit, claiming they found it themselves.

In my world, Dai Zovi won’t hear a word from Apple legal; Apple won’t say a single bad word about him in the press; and, weeks from now, when the bug is fixed in a security update, he’ll receive full credit for finding it.