Mac worm maker

One researcher's revelation that he had developed a new worm for Mac OS X has had unintended repercussions, reports say. The author of Information Security Sell Out says that following the worm announcement, he was at first bombarded by insults, mainly asking for proof of the worm and his identity. This quickly escalated however, leading to death threats, although their seriousness is unknown. "You are lucky you are anonymous or I would put a bullet in your head for this," read one anonymous comment at ISSO.

By Tuesday night the situation had peaked, the blog having (apparently) fallen prey to a hacker who deleted all posts and changed the title to "Security Information." Accused of complicity is Dave Maynor, another researcher who in 2006 became embroiled with Apple over a wireless hack demonstration at the Black Hat security conference. Maynor has denied this, but is rumored to have charged ISSO with being involved with January's "Month of Apple Bugs," and a part of a malicious hacking collective.

ISSO's writer now says that the blog is effectively dead, a victim of a "great experiment to see how the industry could handle some honesty." Others doubt that the site was hacked however, notably Metasploit developer H.D. Moore. Having used a text analysis utility called Unmask, he became "70 percent" sure of the party behind ISSO; Moore claims that the blog was altered shortly after he contacted his suspect.

by MacNN Staff