Does anyone care to attach a debugger to the screen saver process and
then verify that this is or is not a buffer overflow?
-KF

Adam H. Pendleton wrote:

> Delfim Machado wrote:
>
>> three days ago i discovered a security issue, with the last MacOSX.
>> there is a way to crash the screensaver locked with password and gain
>> the desktop.
>>
> This isn't a new issue; well not exactly. The method for crashing to
> screensaver is new to me, but the result isn't. When I first got my
> Powerbook (December of last year), it came with a .Mac screensaver
> which, IIRC, attempts to load its slideshow images off the Internet.
> At the time, I was able to crash the .Mac screensaver by pulling the
> network plug while the screensaver was trying to update its images.
> Doing this caused the screensaver to crash and the Desktop to return
> (despite password locking). I reported this vulnerability to Apple,
> but never got a response, and it obviously hasn't been fixed. I don't
> have an exact date on when I originally reported it, but I believe it
> was sometime in January '03.
>
> ahp
>

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