New Airport Driver Exploit Released For Some Older Macs - MacRumors
Skip to Content

New Airport Driver Exploit Released For Some Older Macs

Just as the Black Hat wireless card exploit was beginning to die down, an exploit in Apple's built-in Airport drivers for some older Macs has been released.

According to the site hosting the proof-of-concept, the driver supplied with Orinoco-based Airport cards (1999-2003 PowerBooks, iMacs) is vulnerable to a remote memory corruption flaw, which could lead to arbitrary code execution if the target is in Active Scanning Mode (i.e. is searching for a base station). The exploit was claimed to have been run on a system running 10.4.8 with all existing patches applied.

It did not appear as though the hackers announcing the exploit and hosting the proof-of-concept code had contacted Apple about the vulnerability prior to the announcement. Nowhere on the site do the hackers claim they had contacted Apple, but rather they reveal the following about their intentions:

With all the hype and buzz about the now infamous Apple wireless device driver bugs (brought to attention at Black Hat, by Johnny Cache and David Maynor, covered up and FUD'ed by others), hopefully this will bring some light (better said, proof) about the existence of such flaws in the Airport device drivers.

Popular Stories

iPhone Handoff Feature

iOS 27 Introduces New 'iPhone Handoff' Feature

Wednesday September 2, 2026 12:35 pm PDT by
Apple has added a new "iPhone Handoff" feature to iOS 27 that will allow you to switch between two iPhones while using the same phone number on each device. This functionality was briefly mentioned during the WWDC 2026 keynote in June, on a slide that listed hundreds of new features coming in iOS 27 and corresponding software updates, but Apple never shared any further details at the time. ...
Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium

New Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 Features Revealed

Sunday August 30, 2026 7:54 am PDT by
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today further outlined what to expect from the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 set to be unveiled on September 9. While it was initially rumored that Touch ID may be coming to the Apple Watch this year, Gurman reiterated that he does not expect the Series 12 or Ultra 4 to have any major design changes compared to the current Series 11 and Ultra 3 models. ...
John Ternus and Rainbow Countour Apple Logo

Apple Just Made a Very Controversial Decision on New CEO's First Day

Wednesday September 2, 2026 6:31 am PDT by
Apple's former hardware engineering chief John Ternus became its CEO on Tuesday, and the company made a controversial decision on his very first day in charge. As of Tuesday, Apple Maps users in the U.S. see the name "Lake America" instead of Lake Ontario for the Great Lake that straddles the New York—Ontario border. Apple made this change after the U.S. Geographic Names Information...