Security/ macos · security · vulnerability · browsers

Deathray Shows How a Website Alone Can Freeze a Mac

A blog post lays out a technique called Deathray that reportedly lets a plain website freeze a Mac, though its technical details remain unconfirmed.

A blog post claims visiting the wrong website can freeze a Mac cold.

The piece, titled "The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac," was published on the blog auberon.xyz and submitted to Hacker News, where it picked up 44 points and 11 comments. As the title puts it, this is presented as a simple technique - not a chain of exploits - that lets an untrusted site freeze the machine. The post's deeper technical details aren't part of the record here, so the specific mechanism behind Deathray remains unconfirmed.

Browser tabs freezing a whole computer is an old story with new names attached every few years, from runaway JavaScript loops to memory-exhaustion bugs that have hit Chrome, Safari, and Firefox alike. What makes a claim like this worth watching isn't novelty - it's that "just visit a link" bugs tend to get patched fast once they're public, because the fix is usually cheaper than the embarrassment.

Until more of the write-up's technical detail surfaces, or Apple responds, Deathray is a name and a headline claim - worth tracking, not yet worth panic.

TR

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