A second look at the Mac OS X Leopard firewall

[Derek Chesterfield]

All executables installed as part of Leopard is signed by Apple's  
private certificate.
Any executable that is launched that is so signed *automatically* gets  
access through the firewall.
Whether that's a good thing or not is open to debate, but the Heise  
article mistakenly assumes that trojans will be able to bypass the  
firewall as well, which is untrue.

While it is useful to discuss the merits of Leopard's security  
mechanisms, it is unfortunate that this article appears to have not  
properly understood those very mechanisms before rubbishing them.  
Perhaps in their eagerness to be first to point out 'problems', they  
forgot to investigate properly first.

On 31 Oct 2007, at 01:06, Robert La Ferla wrote:

> Hope Apple is working on a software update...  In the meantime, be  
> sure you have an external firewall...
>
> http://www.heise-security.co.uk/articles/98120
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