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Re: Detecting Illegitimate OS X Installations?
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Re: Detecting Illegitimate OS X Installations?


  • Subject: Re: Detecting Illegitimate OS X Installations?
  • From: Colin Cornaby <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:55:43 -0700

On Jun 17, 2006, at 3:12 PM, Andrew Farmer wrote:

On 17 Jun 06, at 12:55, Colin Cornaby wrote:

Before I go any further, NOTE WELL that this technique will probably break as Apple releases new hardware! Do not make use it unless you fully believe you can keep your software available and up to date for at least the next few years.

That being said...

One good technique for detecting illegitimate OS X installs could be to check what kind of CPU is being used. Apple has not yet released any Intel Macs which use anything except a Core Solo or Core Duo chip, so any OS X install that's running on a Pentium 4 or an AMD chip is definitely a hacked version. The easiest way to check the CPU type, in turn, would be to use the CPUID instruction.

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Sure, this is one big fat concern. Including such scans isn't really worth it if I'm blocking legitimate OS X machines. I've thought about several options, including checking for the EFI partition. Another idea might be checking for the presence of "Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext", but from the Googling I just did, it looks like this kext is left in place on non-Apple machines. I'll leave the link out for the sake of keeping the mods happy.


-Colin
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References: 
 >Detecting Illegitimate OS X Installations? (From: Colin Cornaby <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Detecting Illegitimate OS X Installations? (From: Andrew Farmer <email@hidden>)

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