Apple Hackers Encounter a Poetic Warning
Feb 16, 10:59 PM (ET)
By MAY WONG
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) has resorted to a poetic broadside in the inevitable cat-and-mouse game between hackers and high-tech companies.
The maker of Macintosh computers had anticipated that hackers would try to crack its new OS X operating system built to work on Intel Corp. (INTC)'s chips and run pirated versions on non-Apple computers. So, Apple developers embedded a warning deep in the software - in the form of a poem.
Indeed, a hacker encountered the poem recently, and a copy of it has been circulating on Mac-user Web sites this week.
Apple confirmed Thursday it has included such a warning in its Intel-based computers since it started selling them in January.
The embedded poem reads: "Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc."
Apple also put in a separate hidden message, "Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext," in another spot for would-be hackers.
"We can confirm that this text is built into our products," Apple issued in a statement. "Hopefully it, and many other legal warnings, will remind people that they should not steal Mac OS X."
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Full article: apnews.excite.com |
