Paul Stenhouse: Mythos finds security holes in MacBooks, US delegation to China had to leave behind all gifts

The US delegation to China had to leave everything gifted behind   

Lapel pins, credentials, gifts, burner devices – all of it had to end up in a bin before boarding Air Force One.    

It's thought to be for national security reasons as China has long been suspected by the West of spying and carrying out cyberattacks, given its advanced intelligence and espionage capabilities.  

 

Mythos has found security holes in Apple's MacBooks 

Apple has staked its brand to security, so this isn't great. And if Apple is at risk from this new Anthropic AI model, does anyone else stand a chance? The security researchers found a way for a local user to get complete access to the device. Luckily it sounds like it's a permission elevation bug, rather than a remote user being able to get in. Apple hasn't commented with any specifics.  

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
The US delegation to China has just wrapped up. But
everyone who went for the Big Journey had to leave
everything they were gifted in China in China, and there
was a whole lot of stuff they were gifted, not
necessarily big stuff, but you know, like everything from little
badgers and lapel pins to the gifts they received had
to be chucked in a bin before they got on

(00:34):
air Force one our textb at Portsteinhouses here to explain why,
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Port Yeah, there's not a lot of trust between these two. No, no,
And do you know what I find fascinating about this
that so in America, if you're usually if you work
for a large corporation and your job requires you to
go to China for a trip, you will be given
a burner device, burn a laptop, burn a phone. Yeah,

(01:00):
they don't want anything basically coming back from China. So
this isn't like, you know, the corporate because they're worried
about what could have been done to it. But what
really struck me about this was that you would have
to have assumed that the US delegation was in a
pretty secure kind of vacuum, you think so when they
were there, you would think so. So. Yeah, I was

(01:22):
surprised when I saw this that everything had to go,
so all of the burner devices in the bin before
you get on air Force one. And I guess it
probably makes sense too because it is Air Force one.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, it is only like the it is the plane
of planes, you know, but everything lapalpens. As you said,
the credentials to show who you were that were issued
by the Chinese government that all had to go to.
I assume they were worried that there could be just
something in these.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, so I'm very small. I just think it was.
I mean, I suppose. I just think there were kind
of listening devices or tracking devices or the potential get
any kind of you know, devices that might be following them, right,
and they're just taking no it's much easier just to
no chances. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, anyway, I think it probably goes to show where
things are politically.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, I think it does too. Yeah, very interesting. Okay, uh, Mythos,
which is your favorite? My favorite of the of the
big Ai models. This is the one from Anthropic that
hasn't been released to you and I yet, but has
been given to lots of the big tech companies because
it's so good at finding security deficiencies. Has found security
holes in Apple's MacBooks, and that is a concern because

(02:38):
I thought Apple's whole thing was that they're really good
when it comes to security.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, I mean, if Apple's not safe, is anyone safe?
I think that's probably We're starting to see a lot
more vindication of why this was held back from the
public and given to trusted organizations, some of the biggest
infrastructure and software kind of providers around, so they can
test there, they can test their stuff against this thing. Look,

(03:06):
I will say this, what we don't know is whether
or not you can just go hello, you know Claude
with your special model, please find a bug for me?
Or how can I get into the MacBook without a
logan credential and it goes away and does it. I
don't know that it's doing that, no, but it certainly
suggests that if you know what you're doing, because the
people who found these were security researchers, so you think

(03:27):
that if they can give it a really good prompt,
it can go away and find that. Now I think
the other thing that I guess was a little bit
of peace of mind with this is that if you
read the kind of if you read what they found
quite closely, it mentioned that they found a vulnerability for
a local user to get complete access to one of
the brand new M five MacBooks. So I guess local

(03:50):
user means you probably already have to have got access
to your computer, which means hopefully that there didn't mean
that a remote user would have been able to get
into your device. But we haven't seen that, we haven't
seen the detail. Apple hasn't commented. I imagine they are fixing it,
and I imagine you'll probably see a patch.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yes, it's honestly been amazing over the last couple of weeks,
just the number of apps and things that I've had
that have come said, oh, we've just got a quick
new patch to improve a little bit just totally unrelated
to this, totally unrelated, Yeah, it is. It is really curious.
And obviously you know open Ai, the company that makes
chat GPT now has a model that apparently does something
very similar. So yes, interesting times. Thanks Paul, appreciate your time.

(04:31):
That is our texpert Paul Stenhouse for more.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
From Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to News
Talks at B from nine am Saturday, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio