The Patching Friars' AlmanacA calendar of CVE saints

December 1

IOHIDeousHoly card for iohideous, generated with AI (Claude, Anthropic) for the Lunario dei Frati Patchatori.CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 15+ IOHIDeous EXEUNT OMNES
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Blessed IOHIDeous, Who Waits for You to Log Out

Patron of mice and keyboards, drivers older than their users, and people who only shut down their Mac on New Year's Eve.

Life

On the last day of 2017 the researcher Siguza published, without warning Apple first, the details and exploit of a flaw in IOHIDFamily, the part of the macOS kernel that talks to mice and keyboards. It allowed reading and writing kernel memory and switching off SIP; according to its finder it had been there for at least fifteen years. Patient as few others, the exploit struck at logout, reboot or shutdown.

Prayer

O Blessed IOHIDeous, who waits in silence for the user to leave, let our input drivers read nothing but keystrokes. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by updating macOS as soon as Apple ships the fix, and staying logged in past midnight just to spite him.

Log out on New Year's Eve, and someone else stays for the party.

Technical record

Disclosed on
December 1 2017
CVE
No CVE: blessed, not yet canonized by MITRE

Sources: blog.siguza.net

Also remembered today

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