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Feb
26
I found this being presented as a ‘watch out, Big Brother’ type of example. It involves a program by Apple called One-to-One/Student-to-laptop where they provide laptops for educational use in certain schools. The case surrounded a situation where administrators could visually remotely monitor what was going on kid’s laptops as a way to ensure they remained focused on school work. They typically used Apple Remote Desktop to do this – a program I use to more easily administrate multiple machines, run bulk updates, installs and which I also use for remote support.
This is not totally Orwellian, but it’s getting close. However, it does get worse. Unbeknownst to the kids and without their permission, these same administrators installed covert webcam activation software which could also monitor their machines when they took them home too! Administrators claimed it was done in case there was a theft of a laptop. Parents claim:
(the School) spied on students and families by “indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the Webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District.
A student was actually confronted by a school official concerning ‘improper behaviour in his home’ culled from the spy software – yikes!
The school is being sued by the Parents of the students and the school has rejigged their security policies in response:
As a result of our preliminary review of security procedures today, I directed the following actions:
· Immediate disabling of the security-tracking program.
· A thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use.
· A review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy; including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated. We want to ensure that any affected students and families are made aware of the outcome of laptop recovery investigations.
· A review of any other technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play.
It’s all a bit creepy, but the program’s root aspirations and results in general are inspiring – a few stray administrators can really ruin a good thing.
More info on the story can be found here as well as here. What do you think? Please comment!
Apr
13
I’m asked all the time: “Should I install anti-virus or anti-spyware software on my Mac?”. I’ve also noticed that when anything out of the ordinary goes wrong I’m told, not asked – “I must have a virus” to wit I smugly answer – ‘you don’t have a virus, Macs are more secure than Windows’ yadda yadda yadda. Well, I need to wipe that smirk off my face as an article in the NY Times on Mac Security has pointed out:
The security researcher Dino A. Dai Zovi knows this better than most. The attack that won him the Pwn2Own hacking contest in 2007 required that his victims do nothing more than visit a malicious Web site. “All they saw was their Web browser crash,” he says.
“I have found that Macs are less secure than their current Windows and Linux counterparts,” says Mr. Dai Zovi, who is co-author of The Mac Hacker’s Handbook. “At least for the last several years, Apple has lagged behind in security, largely because the threat hasn’t been there.”
Basically, the Mac is safe because it’s market share (10%) is still too small to attract hackers to migrate their tools over to a new platform. The article asks what level of market share warrants attacks. It seems to be from 17% on. We’ll see. In the meantime, Apple releases security updates (what are they doing?) to plug holes as they arise and Snow Leopard should hopefully be more secure than Leopard. In the meantime, read this article and like me, wipe that smug off your face : )
Mac Security Part II – NY Times – Riva Richmond