OS X Lion disappoints again - it's just like having no password at all

    OS X from apple has not seen a great deal of interest during development (if any) and one million downloads on launch day, reported by Apple, so you can expect that number was rounded. For an $30 OS this is certainly a disappointment.

Not only has one of the sites endorsed by Apple, Gizmodo, called it a failure but the cuts in manufacturing quality at Foxconn and security holes haven't certainly brought more popularity:

     Security blog Defense in Depth has found a glaring security flaw in OS X Lion that enables hackers to change the password of any user on a machine running Lion. “[While] non-root users are unable to access the shadow files directly, Lion actually provides non-root users the ability to still view password hash data,” Patrick Dunstan from Defense in Depth explained in a recent blog post. The result is that anyone could use a simple Python script, created by Dunstan himself, to discover a user’s password. It gets worse. Reportedly, OS X Lion does not require its users to enter a password to change the login credentials of the current user. That means typing the command: “dscl localhost -passwd /Search/Users/Roger” will actually prompt you to set a new password for Roger. Hackers could easily take advantage of the known bug if they have local access to the computer and Directory Service access. Disabling automatic log-in, enabling sleep and screensaver passwords and disabling guest accounts are as efficient to keeping your Mac secure as duck-taping the lid. We recommend upgrading to a Linux based OS or Windows.

MAC: Security so bad, even your battery can get hacked

There's your problem, it's a virus!

   Charlie Miller's managed yet again to render several Macbooks, Macbook Pros and Airs useless after gaining total access to their battery's micro-controllers' firmware via a security hole. Evidently, the Li-ion packs for the line of laptops are accessible with passwords he dug up from an 2009 software update. He mentions that someone could "use them to do something really bad," including faulting charge-levels and thermal read-outs to possibly even making them explode. He also thinks hard-to-spot malware could be installed directly within the battery, repeatedly infecting a computer unless removed.

“You could put a whole hard drive in, reinstall the software, flash the BIOS, and every time it would reattack and screw you over. There would be no way to eradicate or detect it other than removing the battery.”

Apple Time Capsule, KIRF

         KIRF, or keepin' it real fake, perfectly describes Apple's own new Time Capsule backup device.

     A teardown of last week's refreshed Time Capsule has revealed a regular, cheap-ass, non-enterprise drive lurking within. Curious, as Cupertino's website lists a "Serial ATA server-grade hard disk" as standard equipment on the device's official spec sheet. It's generally assumed that for a drive model to be qualified as "enterprise," it must sustain a mean time between failure-  MTBF for short - in excess of one million hours. So what's the MTBF for the Western Digital's WD20EARS (Caviar Green) in Apple's Time Capsule? Conveniently, the hard drive maker wouldn't say. 

    Of course, we guess the definition here is up for interpretation, but given past experiences with the wireless backup gizmo, we'd certainly hope this improved revision fares better; the last generation of Time Capsules had a  random working time of ~1 year before "just dying".

   Below is the hrdware you can expect in the next generation of Time Capsules. This is acutally a fake ebay HDD, but it comes close to what you get when you pay premium for "premium" Apple hardware:

"New" MacBook air with fixed display isues at cost of SSD performance

     It appears today that no two Apple products are the same. You know the sayng, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. Apple is moving away from Toshiba's X-Gale SSDs to faster Samsung models for MacBook Air.

    Over the last month, Air models have been shipping with two different SSD, the "SM128C" and Toshiba's "TS128C." The SM implies Samsung is the manufacturer, says MSNBC.
    The Samsung drive, when benchmarked, shows off 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write speeds compared to the Toshiba which has 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write.
     The speed difference is minor and it's best to wait for the new new MacBook Air that will come mid 2011 to fix the hardware flaws introduced with the new MacBook Air series.

Via: 9to5 Mac, macotakara.jp, MSNBC

iOS and MACos destroyed (again) at Pwn2Own security conference

    The Pwn2Own event, held at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, allows companies to challenge hackers to exploit their software, i.e. operating systems or web browsers.

iOS
    Charlie Miller and Dion Blazakis have managed to yet again hack iOS thanks to a security hole in the mobile version of Safari. They managed to access the contacts and inbox of an iPhone 4 (iOS 4.2.1) by simply loading a web page.
    The vulnerability isn't patched in iOS 4.3 and it looks like ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) won't be able to protect you from this one.

MACos
    This year French pen-testing firm VUPEN has hacked Apple’s Safari web browser using a zero-day flaw to win the coveted Pwn2Own hacker challenge.
    The exploited computer was a fully patched MacBook running Mac OS X (64-bit). Co-founder of VUPEN, Chaouki Beckar, lured the Mac to a fake website and managed to bypass the ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention) execution procedures that were built into the OS. He then launched a calculator app successfully and wrote files to the machine.

2011 MacBook Pros can't stop freezing and crashing

     Just when we were about to think MACos is on the right track - since it's the last OS to finally get TRIM support to properly use SSD drives - it looks like the shabby build quality(1)(2) and software issues, just won't give it a break!

     Starting with the launch of Apple's new flagship MacBook Pros in late February, there have been hundred of reports of "hard freezes", the device locking up when users are running multiple programs - yes, don't be afraid to lol, multitasking seems to be quite an intense issue for Apple. Despite Apple's attempt to cure the problem with an update to OS X 10.6.7, users are reporting the issue still occurring.

    The issue is stemming from the 15 and 17-inch models, each of which feature Sandy Bridge Core i7 quad-core CPUs and AMD Radeo HD graphics processors.

    A thread entitled "MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze" on the Apple discussion forum is nearing 70 pages, with most users complaining about the crashes whenever using multiple apps, especially video intensive ones like iMovie or gaming.

iFixit tears appart new MacBook Pro, isn't impressed

   The new MacBook Pro left the teardown team completely unimpressed.They found that the subwoofer enclosure was being held in place by a stripped screw and that there was an unlocked ZIF socket connecting the IR sensor, which the team described as "not fitting for an $1,800 machine." Additionally, iFixit discovered "gobs" and "absurd amounts" of thermal paste on the CPU and GPU upon removing the heat sink. "The excess paste may cause overheating issues down the road, but only time will tell," said iFixit.

    Oh you Foxconn rascals you, if this would be all it wouldn't even be so bad. Unfortunately if you look at the picture to the right you can see how small the heat spreaders are compared to the heatpads. We appreciate the nice symmetry, but this is in no case thermal efficient. For $1,800 you should probably get a PC that admits it's a PC and doesn't sacrifice cooling efficiency and build quality for aesthetics and probably has a dedicated and much more powerful graphics card as well.

Via: iFixit

New MacBook Air falls victim to cheap build quality

    It looks like every new Apple gadget is doomed to failure because of the cheap "Made in China" (Foxconn to be specific) labor, and owners of the new MacBook Air models are no exception. Even if the day of its release started with a software bug, locking up while in iMovie, this wasn't the end of the woes.

    Thanks to a YouTube video, we've seen for ourselves evidence of a display flickering in a most unappealing manner, and we're hearing tales of other display issues, kernel errors that occur when the machines are trying to come out of sleep mode, and more.

   There's not been an official response from Apple yet, we're not sure how widespread the problems are, and we haven't experienced these issues first hand, but we'll let you know as soon as we hear something. Promise. In the meantime, it looks like some of you might have a date with the Genius Bar.

Video after the break.