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Comment by bro-stick

Mad props.

If osx were s/xnu/minix 3-style, full microkernel/, sploiting Iokit as a least priv'd process, only it would get pwned and be limited to iokit's acls. Still bad, but it likely wouldnt have rights to exec a root shell.

XNU kexts have way too much authority, and all the syscalls they each tack on compounds the attack surface to the total codebases of all Apple and third-party kexts. Because once you've found and symbolicated the not-really-hidden call table, you're pretty much able to do whatever. And with a mutating mem kext bug ...

parent bro-stick 11 years ago

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