Re: Penetration Testing on Mac OS X

From: Carl Jongsma (info@skiifwrald.com)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2007 - 22:47:47 EDT


Hi Michael,

OS X comes out of the box in a fairly secure state, though there are
a small number of services that are running that could be of interest
to the pentester. The recent talk of a new vulnerability targeting
mDNSResponder could provide a means to enter a default installation.

What is of interest to pentesters will depend on how the target
system has been setup. Apple patches for included third party
software are a little bit delayed from when the developers release
them, so if the target system allows Kerberos authentication for
accessing services (for example), then there are some openings that
can be targeted (if the system maintainer hasn't already patched them).

As with all systems, the choice and implementation of weak passwords
is a common problem and probably the most significant over time.

An excellent resource for security related issues affecting Apple
(besides news sources) is hackintosh.org. There is also the Apple
Developer Connection and online source to Darwin. The NSA have
released a paper detailing their recommendations on how to secure OS
X, which may be a good read if you haven't already read it. Other
than that, have a bit of a look around the net, there are a number of
resources that can easily be found via Google.

Carl

Sūnnet Beskerming Pty. Ltd.
Adelaide, Australia
http://www.beskerming.com

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