http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/Ou/?p=451
By George Ou
March 20th, 2007
Last summer, when I wrote "Vicious orchestrated assault on MacBook
wireless researchers", it set off a long chain of heated debated and
blogs. I had hoped to release the information on who orchestrated the
vicious assault, but threats of lawsuits and a spineless company that
refused to defend itself meant I couldn't disclose the details. A lot
has changed since then: researcher David Maynor is no longer working for
SecureWorks and he's finally given me permission to publish the details.
The scandal broke when Jim Dalrymple put out a hit piece on security
researchers David Maynor and Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch, saying that their
research was a "misrepresentation". Dalrymple based his conclusion
solely on the word of Apple PR director Lynn Fox. David Chartier went
even further and said that "SecureWorks admits to falsifying MacBook
wireless hack" based solely on a SecureWorks disclaimer (it's no longer
there) that merely reaffirmed what the original video was saying all
along - that the hack demonstrated in the video was based on third-party
wireless hardware. I had personally interviewed the two researchers
before this whole scandal broke out and I specifically asked Maynor and
Ellch if they were using Apple's Wi-Fi hardware in their official Black
Hat demonstration, and they clearly said that no Apple Wi-Fi product was
used for the exploit. That's why I was shocked to see the researchers
blamed for changing their story and "admitting" they made the whole
thing up when no one changed the story and no one admitted to anything.
Yet the headline from Chartier, along with Dalrymple's story, were
blasted all over the web after it made Digg and Slashdot and everyone
simply assumed Maynor and Ellch were frauds because they supposedly
"admitted it".
Through all of this, I've been accused of covering up for my "buddies"
and losing my objectivity, but I had never met David Maynor and Jon
Ellch and last summer was my first trip ever to Black Hat and Defcon.
It was by mere chance that I overheard them in an interview with another
reporter in the press room. I asked them if I could videotape an
interview with them afterwards, and they said yes which led to this
interview. But when I read the news that the researchers "admitted to
falsifying their research", I was shocked and I almost believed it for a
second until I read the stories and saw that there was no admission but
a simple reaffirmation of what had been claimed all along on
SecureWorks' website in some obscure location that blogger Chartier just
*happened* to find. It didn't matter that the so-called "evidence"
wasn't an "admission" at all because it looked the part and that's all
that was needed to hang the two researchers and brand them as frauds.
But did Chartier really just happen to come across the evidence?
When I called David Maynor to get to the bottom of this, it turned out
that Apple PR director Lynn Fox (who was also cited by Jim Dalrymple as
proof that the researchers "misrepresented" the research) was the
puppetmaster from start to finish. She not only contacted sympathetic
bloggers like Chartier and "journalists" like Jim Dalrymple, she was
actually the one that got SecureWorks to publish the "clarification" in
the first place. Once she got SecureWorks to publish a clarification
that merely reiterated the fact that third-party hardware was used in
the original video (which was clearly disclosed in the first 20 seconds
of the video that it was third-party hardware), she used that as
"incriminating" evidence that the researchers admitted to falsifying the
video and shared her "findings" with Apple-friendly press.
But how did Lynn Fox get SecureWorks to publish a clarification on their
website? It turned out that Fox had actually wanted an even more
incriminating statement from David Maynor himself and sent him an email
on 8/15/2006 (two days before the public accusations of fraud hit the
web) demanding that he post a confession word-for-word. Maynor refused
and told Fox to speak to SecureWorks PR and the two parties came to a
compromise on 8/16/2006 where SecureWorks would simply post a
clarification. SecureWorks never knew what hit them when the
accusations of fraud hit on 8/17/2006 because they figured they were
merely posting a clarification that reiterated what they had been saying
all along, but they had no idea that MacWorld and an unofficial Apple
blog would tear them to pieces and simply assume it was an admission
that facts were originally misrepresented. As proof of how this all
went down, here is the email Lynn Fox sent to David Maynor demanding
that he post the confession publicly. I was given a copy of it on
8/19/2006.
From: Lynn Fox <####@apple.com>
To: David Maynor <####@mac.com>
Cc: Moody David <####@apple.com>, Wiley Hodges <####@apple.com>
Date: Tue Aug 15, 2006 06:14:09 PM PDT
Subject: Your post on SecureWorks website
<<Original Attached>>
David,
Below is the note we drafted about the MacBook exploit confusion.
Please confirm that you've received this and will post it without
text changes on your blog and front and center on SecureWorks' news
& events page tonight. The placement of this post should be as
prominent as the initial announcement of the exploit demo at Black
Hat.
You are welcome to call me on my cell at 415-###-#### if you need to
discuss any further.
Thanks,
Lynn
-=-
For the Record: MacBook is not inherently vulnerable to Black
Hat-demonstrated exploit
By David Maynor
I want to clarify something about the wifi device driver exploit we
demonstrated at Black Hat in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago.
Confusion has mounted as to whether the exploit I demoed at Black
Hat and for Brian Krebs of the Washington Post is reliant the use of
a third party driver. In short, the answer is yes. The MacBook is
not inherently vulnerable to the attack, and I never said that it
was.
Part of the confusion lies in the fact that we have not specifically
named the third-party device driver; this is because we know that
the vendor is working on a patch and we don't want to release the
name of the chipset until the fix is in place.
I hope this clears up some of the confusion. Stay tuned for a live
demo of this exploit live at Toorcon.
Note that I've masked out parts of the email addresses and parts of Lynn
Fox's cell phone number for privacy issues but I can assure you it was
the right phone number. I actually called the number to confirm if it
was real and Lynn Fox was quite upset and demanded to know where I got
the number. I declined to answer since the email at the time was given
to me by David Maynor off-the-record. I asked Fox about the scandal and
she told me that her cell phone was breaking up and that she'd call me
back. Within a minute I had David Maynor Instant Messaging me that Lynn
Fox was on the phone with him in a rage. I told him I didn't disclose
anything to Fox and Maynor simply directed Fox to SecureWorks PR.
When I finally got Fox back on the phone, I asked her some questions
about how MacWorld and the unofficial Apple blog got the information on
the so-called confession. I got all my questions answered but I can't
disclose what she said since Lynn Fox refused to speak on the record.
But the bottom line is that Lynn Fox played Jim Dalrymple, David
Chartier, and the rest of the Mac press/blogosphere like a violin,
though it was clear they were all willing participants. When I pointed
out the flaws in their stories, Chartier and Dalrymple simply ignored me
and stuck to their guns.
So what was the end result of all this? Apple continued to claim that
there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X but came a month later and
patched their Wireless Drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that
didn't actually exist). Apple patched these "non-existent
vulnerabilities" but then refused to give any credit to David Maynor and
Jon Ellch. Since Apple was going to take research, not give proper
attribution, and smear security researchers, the security research
community responded to Apple's behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple
Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any
notification. The end result is that Apple was forced to patch 62
vulnerabilities in just the first three months of 2007 including last
week's megapatch of 45 vulnerabilities.
Apple is a mega corporation that nearly smashed the reputation of two
individuals with bogus claims of fraud. It didn't matter they weren't
the one's pulling the trigger because they were pulling all the strings.
David Chartier should be ashamed of himself and his blog. Jim Dalrymple
of Macworld and his colleagues that jumped on the bandwagon should be
ashamed of their reporting. Frank Hayes was the only one of Dalrymple's
colleagues that had the decency and honor to apologize. Most of all,
shame on Apple.
_________________________________________
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