8 ms·

> Notarization is not “mandatory”. You can still turn it off. For how much longer? I'm not asking facetiously, the trends across the entire industry are quite

by Reelin 7y ago

> Notarization is not “mandatory”. You can still turn it off. For how much longer? I'm not asking facetiously, the trends across the entire industry are quite obvious at this point. > So now it’s a bad thing that rogue apps can’t destroy your system. It's a bad thing that modern "security measures" somehow consistently manage to be as restrictive towards user freedom as possible. Methods that would accomplish the same user protection without resulting in a walled garden or vendor control of the device are somehow never selected for. I'm sure there are no ulterior motives at play here though. /s

scarface74 7y ago
For how much longer? I'm not asking facetiously, the trends across the entire industry are quite obvious at this point. This same panic has been going on since 10.6 with the introduction of the Mac App Store. How do you propose that you would be able to develop software on the Mac if you had to sign your executable every time that you recompiled it? It's a bad thing that modern "security measures" somehow consistently manage to be as restrictive towards user freedom as possible. So what would be the financial motive for Apple to force signing of apps and allow them to be outside of the App Store? What would be the financial motive of making system files readonly or introducing DriverKit to increase stability. Do you really want third party kext to be “free” to crash your entire system?
- opencl 7y ago
  They could require a paid Apple developer account to sign MacOS binaries just like they do with iOS (with the exception of those certs that expire after a week). I think they would be crazy to do it and don't really expect them to anytime soon but they clearly could. The financial motive is exactly the same as the iOS App Store: get 30% of all app sales revenue and make the OS more secure.
  - Reelin 7y ago
    I think they, along with every other major vendor, are consistently moving towards precisely this model. I don't think they will do it soon, but I think it is likely to happen eventually.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    So how do you propose they force signing for programs built on top of a VM like C# or Java or scripting languages? Also, they don’t get 30% of all app sales. All of the biggest non game money makers either allow you to purchase subscriptions and content outside of the store or force you to.
    - opencl 7y ago
      The same way they already force signing for iOS programs. I don't know the details but you can write iOS apps in C#, Java, and Python today so clearly this solution already exists.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        No a solution doesn’t exist - all of those solutions compile down to a native executable and don’t run on a VM. Even in a hypothetical unlikely future where the JVM, CLR, and whatever runtimes the scripting languages run on had to be signed (which is not a bad idea), you still would be able to write a program that did whatever you wanted unless now you’re going to say that in this hypothetical future, Apple is not only going to force signing, it’s also going to refuse to sign any executable that can run other programs.
- Reelin 7y ago
  > This same panic has been going on since 10.6 with the introduction of the Mac App Store. And rightfully so! How is this not an obvious trend to you?! It isn't just Apple, it's cell phones and tablets with unlockable bootloaders, Windows S-Mode, Samsung Knox, Firefox extension signing that can't be disabled, and a great many other examples. It's the trend that's alarming, not the specific way macOS is configured right now. > How do you propose that you would be able to develop software on the Mac if you had to sign your executable every time that you recompiled it? By paying the Apple tax for a developer license and then just... signing your code every time you compile it? You already have to do this for Firefox extension development if you don't bother to run a dev or unbranded build. Alternatively, just run your (unsigned) compiled code in a VM. > So what would be the financial motive ... The financial motive is the glaringly obvious walled garden! It's the vendor's control over the device you purchased! > Do you really want third party kext to be “free” to crash your entire system? Obviously not; that is a bad faith interpretation of what I said previously. There are ways to ensure user security that don't remove control of the system from the end user. These options are consistently not chosen, by more or less all the major manufactures. I believe that the motives for such behavior are quite obvious.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    By paying the Apple tax for a developer license and then just... signing your code every time you compile it? You really think after selling computers for 43 years Apple is not going to allow people to compile programs without signing every time you compile? How do you propose they are going to lock down scripting languages and programs built with .Net Cord and Java? Are they going to disallow any code on the Mac that’s built on top of a VM? The financial motive is the glaringly obvious walled garden! It's the vendor's control over the device you purchased! So are they now going to lock down outside vendors from creating whatever the new equivalent of kext are without paying a fee? bad faith interpretation of what I said previously. There are ways to ensure user security that don't remove control of the system from the end user. You mean by allowing advanced users of the Mac to turn off safeguards- exactly what they are doing now? Btw, a lot of developers are saying that moving away from kernel extensions will make it easier to build Hackintoshes not harder.
  - 7y ago
gigatexal 7y ago
I think you’re on the wrong platform. The platform of openness you’re looking for is the vast ecosystem of Linux or the BSDs. Apple has never really been open. They don’t release the OS to run on x86 boxes we build, the company is famously vertically integrated so it’s no surprise to me that they’re moving in this direction.
mrpippy 7y ago
Apple was very clear about their intentions at WWDC. A quote from the slides: “You can always choose to run any software on your system” A key difference between the Mac and iOS. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/701/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/701/
pjmlp 7y ago
And yet game consoles are not known for getting malware or virus of any kind. One cannot have security while allowing apps to do whatever they feel like.
- haunter 7y ago
  Yeah almost all modern consoles that are jailbroken were done through the built-in browser That's why Nintendo not putting a browser on Switch
  - ericd 7y ago
    I imagine that that’s a selling point for parents. Maybe that’s the bigger reason?
  - verisimilitudes 7y ago
    The Nintendo Switch does have a WWW browser, solely for permitting access to Internet connection points that require loading a WWW page and performing a certain action as a prerequisite for use. It's appalling an entire WWW browser would be necessary for connecting to certain Internet access points, but that's the current state of things. In any case, someone has already achieved arbitrary code execution through it, but it was sandboxed anyway.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Yes, because most likely that browser was implemented in C or C++ and the exploit was achieved via a memory corruption bug. Also this is an orthogonal issue, the console wasn't designed to have security exploits to start with.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  > One cannot have security while allowing apps to do whatever they feel like. One cannot have a general purpose computer while preventing apps to do whatever they were designed to do.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
chx 7y ago
> at this point. At this point?? Here's my blog post from nine years ago, almost to the day. http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom > Microsoft can [...] make it so that any new app needs to be sanctioned. Apple, obviously can easily follow or even do it before Microsoft.
danieldk 7y ago
For how much longer? I'm not asking facetiously, the trends across the entire industry are quite obvious at this point. [...] I'm sure there are no ulterior motives at play here though. /s If that's Apple's trajectory, why did they things like Hypervisor.framework (much more recent than 10.6's introduction of the App Store), which allows one to make unprivileged virtualization solutions, that can run any OS/application? To me, it their motivation seems two-fold: (1) they want to carve out a niche for security and privacy. People are willing to spend a lot of money to avoid the data grab of Facebook, Google et al. And people are willing to spend money on a system that focuses on security. So, Apple have invested a lot in hardware security (T2) and software security (sandboxing, read-only system files, mandatory kext signing, user-space drivers). And, yes (2) they probably also want to funnel more and more through the Mac App store for profit. The thing is, they can make macOS a walled garden system, while keeping the back door open for advanced users. My dad is protected by the Mac App store, application bundle signing, notarization, and sandboxing, he is not going to boot in recovery mode and run csrutil in the command-line. While I can in the use csrutil to lower protection a bit to be able to run DTrace. In other words, I don't believe that they want to or need to turn macOS in a complete walled garden: 90% of the users does not want to or cannot disable security measures, while at the same time keeping the csrutil around keeps the other 10% happy. --- I think the more serious danger for macOS was negligence. With key execs primarily using iPads and glacial development of macOS, the most imminent danger seemed to be that macOS developed into nothing else but an SDK/IDE for iOS development. But after the last WWDC, I am mildly optimistic that they have woken up.

by Reelin 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

For how much longer? I'm not asking facetiously, the trends across the entire industry are quite obvious at this point. This same panic has been going on since 10.6 with the introduction of the Mac App Store. How do you propose that you would be able to develop software on the Mac if you had to sign your executable every time that you recompiled it? It's a bad thing that modern "security measures" somehow consistently manage to be as restrictive towards user freedom as possible. So what would be the financial motive for Apple to force signing of apps and allow them to be outside of the App Store? What would be the financial motive of making system files readonly or introducing DriverKit to increase stability. Do you really want third party kext to be “free” to crash your entire system?

opencl 7y ago
They could require a paid Apple developer account to sign MacOS binaries just like they do with iOS (with the exception of those certs that expire after a week). I think they would be crazy to do it and don't really expect them to anytime soon but they clearly could. The financial motive is exactly the same as the iOS App Store: get 30% of all app sales revenue and make the OS more secure.
- Reelin 7y ago
  I think they, along with every other major vendor, are consistently moving towards precisely this model. I don't think they will do it soon, but I think it is likely to happen eventually.
- scarface74 7y ago
  So how do you propose they force signing for programs built on top of a VM like C# or Java or scripting languages? Also, they don’t get 30% of all app sales. All of the biggest non game money makers either allow you to purchase subscriptions and content outside of the store or force you to.
  - opencl 7y ago
    The same way they already force signing for iOS programs. I don't know the details but you can write iOS apps in C#, Java, and Python today so clearly this solution already exists.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      No a solution doesn’t exist - all of those solutions compile down to a native executable and don’t run on a VM. Even in a hypothetical unlikely future where the JVM, CLR, and whatever runtimes the scripting languages run on had to be signed (which is not a bad idea), you still would be able to write a program that did whatever you wanted unless now you’re going to say that in this hypothetical future, Apple is not only going to force signing, it’s also going to refuse to sign any executable that can run other programs.
Reelin 7y ago
> This same panic has been going on since 10.6 with the introduction of the Mac App Store. And rightfully so! How is this not an obvious trend to you?! It isn't just Apple, it's cell phones and tablets with unlockable bootloaders, Windows S-Mode, Samsung Knox, Firefox extension signing that can't be disabled, and a great many other examples. It's the trend that's alarming, not the specific way macOS is configured right now. > How do you propose that you would be able to develop software on the Mac if you had to sign your executable every time that you recompiled it? By paying the Apple tax for a developer license and then just... signing your code every time you compile it? You already have to do this for Firefox extension development if you don't bother to run a dev or unbranded build. Alternatively, just run your (unsigned) compiled code in a VM. > So what would be the financial motive ... The financial motive is the glaringly obvious walled garden! It's the vendor's control over the device you purchased! > Do you really want third party kext to be “free” to crash your entire system? Obviously not; that is a bad faith interpretation of what I said previously. There are ways to ensure user security that don't remove control of the system from the end user. These options are consistently not chosen, by more or less all the major manufactures. I believe that the motives for such behavior are quite obvious.
- scarface74 7y ago
  By paying the Apple tax for a developer license and then just... signing your code every time you compile it? You really think after selling computers for 43 years Apple is not going to allow people to compile programs without signing every time you compile? How do you propose they are going to lock down scripting languages and programs built with .Net Cord and Java? Are they going to disallow any code on the Mac that’s built on top of a VM? The financial motive is the glaringly obvious walled garden! It's the vendor's control over the device you purchased! So are they now going to lock down outside vendors from creating whatever the new equivalent of kext are without paying a fee? bad faith interpretation of what I said previously. There are ways to ensure user security that don't remove control of the system from the end user. You mean by allowing advanced users of the Mac to turn off safeguards- exactly what they are doing now? Btw, a lot of developers are saying that moving away from kernel extensions will make it easier to build Hackintoshes not harder.
- 7y ago

gigatexal 7y ago

I think you’re on the wrong platform. The platform of openness you’re looking for is the vast ecosystem of Linux or the BSDs. Apple has never really been open. They don’t release the OS to run on x86 boxes we build, the company is famously vertically integrated so it’s no surprise to me that they’re moving in this direction.

mrpippy 7y ago

Apple was very clear about their intentions at WWDC. A quote from the slides: “You can always choose to run any software on your system” A key difference between the Mac and iOS. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/701/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/701/

pjmlp 7y ago

And yet game consoles are not known for getting malware or virus of any kind. One cannot have security while allowing apps to do whatever they feel like.

haunter 7y ago
Yeah almost all modern consoles that are jailbroken were done through the built-in browser That's why Nintendo not putting a browser on Switch
- ericd 7y ago
  I imagine that that’s a selling point for parents. Maybe that’s the bigger reason?
- verisimilitudes 7y ago
  The Nintendo Switch does have a WWW browser, solely for permitting access to Internet connection points that require loading a WWW page and performing a certain action as a prerequisite for use. It's appalling an entire WWW browser would be necessary for connecting to certain Internet access points, but that's the current state of things. In any case, someone has already achieved arbitrary code execution through it, but it was sandboxed anyway.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Yes, because most likely that browser was implemented in C or C++ and the exploit was achieved via a memory corruption bug. Also this is an orthogonal issue, the console wasn't designed to have security exploits to start with.
rbanffy 7y ago
> One cannot have security while allowing apps to do whatever they feel like. One cannot have a general purpose computer while preventing apps to do whatever they were designed to do.
- pjmlp 7y ago

chx 7y ago

> at this point. At this point?? Here's my blog post from nine years ago, almost to the day. http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom > Microsoft can [...] make it so that any new app needs to be sanctioned. Apple, obviously can easily follow or even do it before Microsoft.

danieldk 7y ago

For how much longer? I'm not asking facetiously, the trends across the entire industry are quite obvious at this point. [...] I'm sure there are no ulterior motives at play here though. /s If that's Apple's trajectory, why did they things like Hypervisor.framework (much more recent than 10.6's introduction of the App Store), which allows one to make unprivileged virtualization solutions, that can run any OS/application? To me, it their motivation seems two-fold: (1) they want to carve out a niche for security and privacy. People are willing to spend a lot of money to avoid the data grab of Facebook, Google et al. And people are willing to spend money on a system that focuses on security. So, Apple have invested a lot in hardware security (T2) and software security (sandboxing, read-only system files, mandatory kext signing, user-space drivers). And, yes (2) they probably also want to funnel more and more through the Mac App store for profit. The thing is, they can make macOS a walled garden system, while keeping the back door open for advanced users. My dad is protected by the Mac App store, application bundle signing, notarization, and sandboxing, he is not going to boot in recovery mode and run csrutil in the command-line. While I can in the use csrutil to lower protection a bit to be able to run DTrace. In other words, I don't believe that they want to or need to turn macOS in a complete walled garden: 90% of the users does not want to or cannot disable security measures, while at the same time keeping the csrutil around keeps the other 10% happy. --- I think the more serious danger for macOS was negligence. With key execs primarily using iPads and glacial development of macOS, the most imminent danger seemed to be that macOS developed into nothing else but an SDK/IDE for iOS development. But after the last WWDC, I am mildly optimistic that they have woken up.