« Apple Patches AirPort Weaknesses | Main | The End of This Blog »

AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi Flaw

The Month of Kernel Bugs (MoKB) project finished out November with a undisclosed flaw for AirPort Extreme: They had previously noted a number of Wi-Fi flaws, including a major one for AirPort Card users, now patched by Apple. In this case, they write that they communicated the flaw to Apple before announcing its existence, and haven't disclosed the full parameters of it. It's a similar flaw to others that have appeared, in which the kernel can be made to panic (crashing the computer), among other potential implications they're not disclosing, when improperly formed messages are sent to an AirPort Extreme Card. The security posting mentions "beacon frames" without elaboration. These frames are messages sent by an access point or base station that describe its parameters to an adapter that is looking to associate with a local network, or gathering information about the networks around it.

It's likely that Apple would be able to patch this quickly, as their September update covered a general category of malformed frames. The security team is probably now well aware of how to fix this kind of exploit. I'll guess we'll see an updated by Dec. 10 unless Apple deems this a much worse or much less severe problem than how it's being described now.

Post a comment