The Trouble Has Started; The Hacking of OS X
Not too long ago I wrote that one of the unintended consequences of Mac’s move to the x86 (Intel) architecture would be that hack attacks on OS X would increase. It was widely reported that OS 10.4.1 had been hacked so it would run on non-Apple hardware. Apple thought it had changed up 10.4.3 to stop that; the news on the Net this morning is that the latest version of Tiger has been hacked again, and it is running not only on PC hardware but older Apple hardware not intended for Tiger as well. The hacker bypassed the security feature (called Trusted Platform Module) not by hacking TPM itself (which is considered unbreakable…and if you believe that..) but by somehow “convincing” the operating systems it didn’t need it.
By the time Apple releases its next operating system they will have found a way to plug the current hole, but, inevitably, someone out there will find another. I think it is very unlikely that Apple will have any significant success at locking down its operating systems to its own hardware. Apple probably has the legal resources to stop any legitimate effort to run OS X on anything other than Apple systems, at least until someone launches an anti-trust suit to open the situation up. If that anti-trust suit is launched by a major company, then Apple could find itself in court under the same laws used to prosecute Microsoft, even if for different reasons. At some point, as Apple market share increases, that most certainly will happen.
Even if Apple doesn’t have to deal with that for a while, it will most certainly see a proliferation of hacked copies of OS X floating around in the world. From the company’s standpoint, those losses would hit them on two significant fronts. One, of course, would be the lost revenue from not selling a copy of OS X; and the other would be the loss of revenue from not selling its own hardware. Unfortunately, this has the potential to cause Apple significant financial harm.
Is there a solution to that? Yes. Stay with PowerPC.
Now, I know Apple isn’t going to do that. And it will be interesting to see what happens. I hope Apple pulls it off, but I fear that Apple is opening a Pandora’s Box of security and financial problems it did not think through, or perhaps, arrogantly convinced itself it would not have to deal with. It may turn out that despite the added speed the Intel CPU’s bring, the happiest Apple customers will be those who remained behind with PowerPC and the way the Mac experience used to be.
By the time Apple releases its next operating system they will have found a way to plug the current hole, but, inevitably, someone out there will find another. I think it is very unlikely that Apple will have any significant success at locking down its operating systems to its own hardware. Apple probably has the legal resources to stop any legitimate effort to run OS X on anything other than Apple systems, at least until someone launches an anti-trust suit to open the situation up. If that anti-trust suit is launched by a major company, then Apple could find itself in court under the same laws used to prosecute Microsoft, even if for different reasons. At some point, as Apple market share increases, that most certainly will happen.
Even if Apple doesn’t have to deal with that for a while, it will most certainly see a proliferation of hacked copies of OS X floating around in the world. From the company’s standpoint, those losses would hit them on two significant fronts. One, of course, would be the lost revenue from not selling a copy of OS X; and the other would be the loss of revenue from not selling its own hardware. Unfortunately, this has the potential to cause Apple significant financial harm.
Is there a solution to that? Yes. Stay with PowerPC.
Now, I know Apple isn’t going to do that. And it will be interesting to see what happens. I hope Apple pulls it off, but I fear that Apple is opening a Pandora’s Box of security and financial problems it did not think through, or perhaps, arrogantly convinced itself it would not have to deal with. It may turn out that despite the added speed the Intel CPU’s bring, the happiest Apple customers will be those who remained behind with PowerPC and the way the Mac experience used to be.
posted by Andy Foster at
1:59 AM
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