Re: Software Update Server Shutdown

Subject: Re: Software Update Server Shutdown

From: Rasul Shishehbor <email@hidden>

Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:17:00 -0600

Delivered-to: email@hidden

Organization: Concordia College

User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Macintosh/20051201)

Mark Nelson wrote:

This feature of the SU service shutting down if can not contact the "mother ship" at Apple was explained to me by an Apple SE as a security feature to guard against rogue hijack attempts of the local SU service and subsequent insertion of altered update packages with malicious payloads.

HTH,

Mark

Mark Nelson
Director of Information Technology
Thayer Academy
745 Washington Street
Braintree, MA. 02184

Fine Apple, give us a checkbox for non-paranoid admins. I would expect it to shut off if it contacted a site that wasn't Apple's servers. Not shut off if it simply can't contact anyone. By hijacking I'm assuming that Apple is guarding against our software update servers downloading files from a non-Apple site. There's no other "hijacking" possible on our local network. What do they think someone will hijack our local SUS with bad updates? Well in that case, what is to stop someone from simply jumping the routine update check or simply coding their own SUS. And....if someone successfully hijacks Apple's servers(probably not possible if our mirrors download via SSL), our SUS would download the updates happily and keep running as it contacted "Apple's site". A simple failure to connect to Apple shouldn't shut off the service. The updates themselves if signed by Apple would safeguard against altered packages. The software update service as I mentioned could simply be hacked not to check Apple's site ever. Hijacking is not the correct answer. Lack of foresight seems more likely.

Rasul

Rasul C. Shishehbor

Server Systems Administrator

Concordia College

Moorhead, MN

(218)299-4738

email@hidden

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References:

>Software Update Server Shutdown (From: Jason Buckner <email@hidden>)

>Re: Software Update Server Shutdown (From: Rasul Shishehbor <email@hidden>)