The first independent reviews of the security enhancements in Mac OS X Leopard are in — and they’re not entirely pleasant for the folks in Cupertino.
First up is Heise Security’s takedown of the new application-based firewall in Leopard, which Apple promises will specify the behavior of specific applications to either allow or block incoming connections.
The new firewall in Leopard isn’t the only security feature being pooh-poohed by security researchers. According to Thomas Ptacek (right), co-founder of Matasano Security, Apple’s implementation of memory randomization in Leopard doesn’t make the operating system immune from virus and worm attacks.
For starters, Ptacek found that the dynamic linker library (dyld) is not randomized. “From what I can tell, ten different Leopard Macs booted at ten different times will have the same offset to dyld,” Ptacek said in a first-take on Leopard security.
|