Foundations of Mac OS X Leopard Security

CHAPTER 9Securing a Wireless Network

This just in about wireless security on a Mac: at the Black Hat conference in August 2006, David Maynor and Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch demonstrated to the rest of the world something that hackers had known for a long time. Maynor and Ellch, two security professionals with long careers in the security industry, were able to release what is known as a proof-of-concept attack by exploiting the wireless Atheros drivers built into the Mac operating system. Using a script called setup.sh, which turned a Mac computer (with its wireless card turned on) into an access point, an attacker could gain control of an unsuspecting Mac user's laptop. Another hacker script, bad_seed, could then be run from the host computer ...