Vulnerability in Apple keyboards: hack allows key logging
By: Mark O'Gorman | August 4, 2009
Not even a week on since we reported to you about the iPhone vulnerability via SMS that could potentially leave somebody to entirely take over your iPhone, we now have to report on another Apple vulnerability, luckily this time not for the iPhone, but instead a hardware vulnerability with the Apple Keyboards which the Digital Society website has reported.
It seems that this keyboard security flaw is not trivial, but indeed quite serious, enabling the people who exploit it to view every keystroke you make and even take over your machine and infect you with other rubbish, all that these hackers simply need do is update your keyboards firmware with a file that is smaller than 100kb and the entire hack can be performed in a frightening 18 seconds flat! And what’s worse is the fact there is no way of healing it, you simply have to throw away your keyboard. The hack can be performed on USB and Bluetooth keyboards and it seems that it is near impossible to detect, but don’t despair just yet.
Mr. Chen (the discoverer) has gave his advice to Apple for them to follow, but he has stated that if Apple doesn’t follow his advice and provides an insufficient fix he will indeed create a permanent fix to this problem and post it up for people, so watch this space!
For any worried Apple users, make sure you check out this full article HERE for all information regarding this security flaw, and also for any undesirables of you out there, there is also a link on that page to a 190 page deck of slides on how the hack is performed.
So what’s your opinion on all the security flaws that Apple seems to have emerging recently? Has this shaken your beliefs about Apple’s more secure platforms? Or do you just think that these are odd cases and Microsoft is a million times less secure? Let us know here at product reviews!
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