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Apple Involvement Cited In Smear Campaign
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-03-21
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ZDNet blogger George Ou, the technical director for TechRepublic, has published a scathing account of how Apple played puppet master to a whispering campaign against a couple of security researchers who found issues with MacBook wireless drivers.
 | | Apple Cited In Smear Campaign |  |
Compliant bloggers and writers followed like rats while Apple PR director Lynn Fox whistled away on her magic flute, Ou charged in his followup to last summer's explosive story featuring David Maynor and Jon 'Johnny Cache' Ellch at the Black Hat conference.
A hack that could compromise a wireless MacBook was recorded on video before the conference. The researchers noted they were not using Apple's Wi-Fi products, but third-party hardware instead. Ou and Washington Post security blogger Brian Krebs both reported originally on this.
Ou wrote that this was when Fox got involved with the story:
When I called David Maynor to get to the bottom of this, it turned out that Apple PR director Lynn Fox (who was also cited by Jim Dalrymple as proof that the researchers "misrepresented" the research) was the puppetmaster from start to finish. She not only contacted sympathetic bloggers like Chartier and "journalists" like Jim Dalrymple, she was actually the one who got SecureWorks to publish the "clarification" in the first place.
The clarification meant a reaffirmation that non-Apple hardware was used in the recorded demonstration. According to Ou, that gave Fox leverage to go to Apple's friendly reporting community and incriminate Maynor and Ellch for fraud.
With Maynor's departure from SecureWorks, where he had researched the exploit originally, Ou could finally discuss the situation in depth. He obtained an email Fox sent to Maynor that demanded publication of an Apple-scripted confession word for word on SecureWorks' website, which Maynor rejected. That email contained contact information for Fox, including her phone number:
I actually called the number to confirm that it was real, and Lynn Fox was quite upset and demanded to know where I got the number. I declined to answer since the e-mail at the time was given to me by David Maynor off the record. I asked Fox about the scandal, and she told me that her cell phone was breaking up and that she'd call me back. Within a minute, I had David Maynor instant-messaging me that Lynn Fox was on the phone with him in a rage. I told him I didn't disclose anything to Fox, and Maynor simply directed Fox to SecureWorks PR.
Although Fox spoke off the record, Ou said he got his questions about the situation answered. Jim Dalrymple and David Chartier, who had ignored Ou's observations about their reporting (Ou said Chartier even deleted his comments on the TUAW story Chartier wrote), were "played like a violin," Ou wrote.
Those non-existent problems with Apple wireless drivers were patched a month later in one of Apple's regular security updates. They did not credit Maynor or Ellch with uncovering the problem.
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Tags: Apple, Wireless, Driver, Security, David Maynor, George Ou
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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