Old Macs vulnerable to wireless hacks expert claims

Stan Beer
Thursday, 02 November 2006 18:51

Business IT - Security

If you bought a Wi-Fi card for your iMac or PowerBook before and up to 2003, the Airport driver could be vulnerable to a hack according security expert HD Moore.

Moore, who created the open source Metasploit Project in 2003, an attacker could corrupt a Mac's memory by sending a malicious data packet to the target machine. However, he admits he has yet to completely crack a Mac using this method.

Whether Moore succeeds or not, however, is academic as the flaw is not present in Macs shipped after 2003. However, Mac users tend to hang on to their old machines longer than their PC counterparts so a significant proportion of users could be affected by the vulnerability if it is exploited.