Mac Wi-Fi Hack Mocked with Pwnie Award

· by · News

Last year at the Black hat Conference, David Maynor and Jon Ellchshowed off a controversial MacBook Wi-Fi security exploit that later appeared to be not much of a threat at all. This year, the hack was awarded a Pwnie award at the same conference for being the most over-hyped bug of the year, according to ZDNet.

Mr. Maynor originally demonstrated the vulnerability over video claiming that showing it live could potentially lead to audience members intercepting and using the hack themselves. There was never any substantial proof released to the public to show that the hack really worked, and Apple even went so far as to say there was no evidence that it worked at all on its standard hardware.

The Pwnie judges commented "In the end, the only public information about Maynoris Wi-Fi vulnerabilities are hype, denial, a media frenzy, and a patch that may or may not have been based on Maynoris findings."

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet

Jeff is the Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and co-host of the Apple Context Machine podcast. He is the author of "The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X" from Peachpit Press, and writes for several design-related publications. Jeff has presented at events such as Macworld Expo, the RSA Conference, and the Mac Computer Expo. In all his spare time, he also co-hosts the We Have Communicators podcast, and makes guest appearances on several other podcasts, too. Jeff dreams in HD.

Sign Up for the Newsletter

Enter a valid email address

Join the TMO Express Daily Newsletter to get the latest Mac headlines in your e-mail every weekday.

Adding to list…

No Comments

Log-in to comment