Wireless Device Driver Flaws Allow Takeover of PCs, Macs

This week Intel and SANS announced three vulnerabilities for Centrino device drivers on Windows, the worst of which could let the attacker execute code with kernel-level privileges. Intel has released new drivers (1,2,3) for affected systems, which you find in the SANS link above. At present there are no known exploits, but don???t hold your breath.

And for all those Mac users who experience a tingle of superiority every time a new Wintel vulnerability comes to light, a pair of security researchers at Black Hat demonstrated an attack that lets them take over a Macbook by exploiting a vulnerability in its wireless device driver. Apparently the Macbook doesn???t need to be connected to a wireless network for the attack to succeed. As reported in the link above, the researchers chose to demo the attack on a Mac to pop Apple's security smugness bubble. How's that for marketing backlash?