[Ti] Some one Hacked me!

[Alan Thompson]

This is a very dangerous assumption.  Macintosh computers can happen, 
and probably has.  I hardly consider the viruses and trojan horse 
programs, or spyware akin to being hacked - being hacked is very 
unlikely, but if your Mac is out there on the public wan (the 
internet), and it is not protected by any means, it may be vulnerable 
to a multitude of attacks.  You could be running apache, and say that 
some one out there scans your subnet, finds your host, and then does a 
port scan.  It finds that you're running a web server, AFP (apple file 
sharing), perhaps Windows file sharing, etc.  Lets say that any of 
those applications, or services has some vulnerability, like maybe a 
simple buffer overrun susceptibility.  The hacker then tries some 
readily available program or script to clog that service, and make it 
crash, and for some reason, the crash now gives the hacker a shell on 
your system, or worse, the ability to gain root all because lets say 
samba, or apache, both third party applications commonly run on unix 
hosts, has some poor error handling routine that gives entry to the 
host.

This is a simplistic scenario that I've described, but much more 
realistic that the very dangerous attitude that Apple computers don't 
or can't get hacked.  They can indeed.  Be careful.

Alan

On Jan 12, 2005, at 6:20 AM, Robert Ameeti wrote:

> The point is to recognize that hacking of Macintosh computers does not 
> happen.