Apple missed security boat with Snow Leopard, says researcher
Apple missed a golden opportunity to lock down Snow Leopard when it again failed to fully implement security technology that Microsoft perfected nearly three years ago in Windows Vista, a noted Mac researcher said today.
Dubbed ASLR, for address space layout randomization, the technology randomly assigns data to memory to make it tougher for attackers to determine the location of critical operating system functions, and thus make it harder for them to craft reliable exploits.
"Apple didn't change anything," said Charlie Miller, of Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators, the co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook, and winner of two consecutive "Pwn2own" hacker contests. "It's the exact same ASLR as in Leopard, which means it's not very good."
