Month of Apple Bugs web page attempts to hack Mac users?

“Alan Oppenheimer of Open Door Networks (which provides Mac security tools and information) alerted us to an apparent denial-of-service hack embedded in the latest Month of Apple Bugs web page,” MacInTouch reports.

For most of today, we’ve been looking into a situation discovered here where the Month of Apple Bugs project may actually be attempting to hack Mac users who pull up the most recent bug in their browsers. It’s still unclear exactly what browsers in what versions of Mac OS X, but we’re sure enough something’s going on that we thought we should let people know.

MacInTouch reports what is known right now:

• The page for bug #29 contains the following HTML:

<img src=”bug-files/heat-up.jp2″ alt=”” height=”1″ width=”1″ />
<!– Never use the macbook at bed again when browsing the MoAB or you will fry your balls, looper –>

• The referenced .jp2 (JPEG 2000) file hangs up at least one copy of Safari running on Mac OS 10.4.8 (with all security updates installed) and requires a force quit. It’s unknown if anything else bad is done. It does not hang at least one other copy of Safari (on a Leopard build) and various copies of Firefox. The jp2 file, at first glance, looks normal (although we’ve no JPEG expertise here), but is 344KB big.

• There was a JPEG 2000 OSX vulnerability previously, but in theory it was fixed in 10.4.8. This is almost certainly a different bug.

• There’s an ongoing discussion of this issue in the MoAB Fixes Group, confirming some things.

• Apple has been alerted, and others are looking into the issue as well.

Full article here.

37 Comments

  1. Productive, aren’t they?

    Perhaps not as bad the guys just arrested for planning to kidnap, torture and behead a British soldier in the UK… but I’d still squeeze their tiny testicles to pulp. Not that I’m violent or anything. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue laugh” style=”border:0;” />

  2. I’ll bet this isn’t even the Bug o’ the Month Club people…! You’d have to think they would realize that “we” the Mac community would be able to find that code pretty easy, and I doubt that they would use such vulgar language, if they are truly trying to be taken seriously. I’d be willing to bet that this jpg thingie was hacked onto their page…! Wonder what computer their website is run on? ; )

  3. In case it wasn’t apparent before, the MoAB guy LMH (little mac hater) is a dick.

    I am running Safari on 10.3.9 and it did basically tie up the browser. However the page worked in Opera.

    <sarcasm>I would like to stick a lit cigarette in his eye if I were to ever meet him.</sarcasm>

  4. When was the last time you heard anything about the “Month of Mac Bugs”? Three weeks ago?

    The poor slobs expected the Internet to explode in terror as their slew of shocking exploitations chilled Mac users everywhere to their core, unplugging their ethernet cables to protect themselves from the coming storm. Instead, people looked at their first few bugs, said “Is that the best you can come up with?”, shook their head and laughed, and went on with their lives.

    I imagine the MoAB guys are in a pretty bad mood right about now. I’m not surprised that they’d try a bitter stunt like this. “Ignore US, will you? We’ll show you! We’ll show you all!”

    Of course, since most Macs users don’t care about their pissy little crusade, and aren’t visiting the site, very few will be impacted by this.

  5. No but really – Is it perfectly alright for anyone to publicly announce that they’re going to be “looking for holes” in someone else’s product? Basically advertising that they will be creating bad things meant to explore the proverbial vulnerabilities of a software product? If something they create gets out, whether its really bad or just sort of a nuisance, is there absolutely no culpability? Ooops, that’s it? You gotta be kind’n me.

  6. Out of curiosity I clocked on bug #29

    My safari froze…had to force quit
    My photoshop froze…had to force quit
    My entourange froze…had to force quit

    Tried to restart….wouldn’t accept the command

    Had to yank the plug.

    Somebody ought to shoot those bastards…….

  7. The bug is apparently in Core Graphics, so any program that uses the routine and tries to open the malformed JPEG 2000 (.JP2) may hang.

    From the MoAB fixes post by Matt Beaumont:

    “FWIW, the relevant library is Kakadu [1], licensed by Apple for use with CG. It lives in
    ‘/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Framew orks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libJP2.dylib’. “

  8. In this case I would favor Apple layers sue them and have the FBI knock at their door as with any other malware moronic fscking idiot out there.

    Then it would be “Don’t fsck with Mac OS X and its users or you’ll regret when you’ll spend few nights in jail. MORON”

    Not to take into account that the entire collection of their bugs is risible. If anything they are making Mac users just raise shoulders and laugh at one more wannabe cracker of Mac OS X.

  9. No really, does anybody know a good attorney?

    In other news Apple recently had to pay bloggers $700,000 in attorney fees to defendents claiming freedom of speech violations…

    Are we bloggers? And is our freedom to use something other than Windows being directly and illegally attacked by this MOAB entity? Just wondering…

  10. My question is, is this the best they could do? So an application hung? That does happen from time to time, but a virus that erases my HD or steals info from my computer is another story. THAT would have been scary.

    These guys are just ticked off that:
    a) Apple has become so incredibly popular (first and foremost).
    b) They couldn’t find anything really nasty.
    and
    c) They don’t get laid as often as Mac users.

    “Farva! Your suspension… CONTINUES!”

    CPT SM

  11. I’ve been following the MoAB since the beginning and my opinion as an average user (not a programmer or a security expert)

    A lot of the bugs were for apps that I dont use.

    A lot of the bugs rely on malformed inputs and seem like they can be fixed relatively easily.

    Only a few of the bugs could conceivably be used to take over a Mac, most will just crash the computer. LMH will argue that any crash can allow exploitation, but this doesn’t really seem that plausible for most of the bugs.

    Turning off “Open Safe Files after Downloading” and running as a normal user (not as an Admin user) will mitigate several of the potential exploits.

    LMH is a jerk and a hypocrite.

  12. waitaminnit… the Month of Apple Bugs is over? that’s it? no Earth shattering discoveries? no flood of malware? no Macs going up in smoke? and in order to make my browser crash i have to visit the MoAB website?

    that wasn’t even worth the time…

    “No Earth shattering kaboom?”
    -Marvin the Martian

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