reinstall of OS X question

[frozencarbonite]

This is a hypothetical question.

If someone gets control of your machine and you have to reinstall OS X, would you also need to change the passwords for your Airport base station and network?

Also wouldn't you need to do this AFTER you reinstalled OS X because only after a clean reinstall could you be sure that the hacker wasn't getting the new password? If you changed the password without cleaning your system, couldn't the hacker get the new password also?

I guess it all depends on the exploit. But I was just wondering if anyone could answer this so I would know what to do in a situation like this.

 

[gauchogolfer]

I don't think you need to concern yourself about this, since it's never happened. Operating on hypotheticals compounding other hypotheticals gets you into tinfoil-hat land™ pretty quickly. If they're good enough to be the first person to hack OS X, I don't think they'll be troubled by sniffing out your airport/router encryption.

 

[frozencarbonite]

So all these vulnerabilities like the Javascript one in Safari http://secunia.com/advisories/21271/, if successfully exploited, that person would be the first one to hack OS X?

In other words, the vulnerabilities in programs for OS X are not an issue as of now?

 

[gauchogolfer]

So all these vulnerabilities like the Javascript one in Safari http://secunia.com/advisories/21271/, if successfully exploited, that person would be the first one to hack OS X?

In other words, the vulnerabilities in programs for OS X are not an issue as of now?

There hasn't been an OSX virus in the wild, nor has there been any instance of remote compromise of an OS X machine. So yes, that would be the first instance if they were able to take control of a machine.