18 ms·

You make it sound so sinister, but yes of course Apple will use IPv6 if that’s the only (or best) route. That’s a good thing. Where does “constantly freezes” c

You make it sound so sinister, but yes of course Apple will use IPv6 if that’s the only (or best) route. That’s a good thing. Where does “constantly freezes” come from? You didn’t mention that in your linked post. And if your computer “constantly freezes” with Apple blackholed, why wouldn’t it also be constantly freezing when your network connection doesn’t reach the internet? I’m pretty sure they use an apple.com URL for their reachability test, so your blackhole should be blocking that too.

user3939382 6y ago
Why are they ignoring /etc/hosts if this is good behavior?
- jojobas 6y ago
  In their book a bit of malware might have modified /etc/hosts. It's for your own good!
- judge2020 6y ago
  Are you writing ::/0 domain.example as well? It might using either AAAA DNS lookups or the equivalent of `getent hosts` which pulls v6 records first, which are only overridden if there is a v6 override for the hostname. $ getent hosts cloudflare.com && getent ahosts cloudflare.com 2606:4700::6810:85e5 cloudflare.com 104.16.133.229 STREAM cloudflare.com $ echo "0.0.0.0 cloudflare.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts $ getent hosts cloudflare.com && getent ahosts cloudflare.com 2606:4700::6810:85e5 cloudflare.com 0.0.0.0 STREAM cloudflare.com
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  Why are you using /etc/hosts to modify the behavior of the Apple resolver system? That’s not how macOS directory services work, and Apple only appears to offers it as a legacy backwards-compat stub with no guarantee of support or effectiveness for modern anything. It’s no surprise that it’s not an effective solution for you.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- judge2020 6y ago
  Are you also writing :: domain.example Because the difference is gethostbynamev2 (the most likely function being used, or I suppose the Apple equivalent) looks up a ipv6 hostname before it looks up a ipv4 hostname, which means a "0.0.0.0 domain.example" entry won't override the result of ipv6 lookups. $ echo "0.0.0.0 cloudflare.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts $ getent hosts cloudflare.com && getent ahosts cloudflare.com 2606:4700::6810:85e5 cloudflare.com 0.0.0.0 STREAM cloudflare.com
  - user3939382 6y ago
    I disabled IPv6 altogether, and Apple’s processes are still finding a way to resolve their real IPs after my DNS and /etc/hosts resolved their domains to 0.0.0.0. DNS should be enough, I shouldn’t have to black hole Apple’s entire /8 to stop macOS from phoning home when I’m not using the computer and no apps are running.
    - lilyball 6y ago
      I suspect the number of macOS machines on networks with misconfigured DNS is far higher than the number of macOS machines whose admins want to prevent them from talking to Apple. So I’m glad they’re going to great lengths to preserve their ability to communicate with Apple even under adverse network conditions.
      - user3939382 6y ago
        I appreciate giving people the benefit of the doubt, but this feels overly charitable to me. I doubt they’re worried about accidentally misconfigured /etc/hosts files. Much more likely is that they were aware of outbound firewalls like Little Snitch and want to evade user attempts to block their software, as discussed in the main article here.

user3939382 6y ago

Why are they ignoring /etc/hosts if this is good behavior?

jojobas 6y ago
In their book a bit of malware might have modified /etc/hosts. It's for your own good!
judge2020 6y ago
Are you writing ::/0 domain.example as well? It might using either AAAA DNS lookups or the equivalent of `getent hosts` which pulls v6 records first, which are only overridden if there is a v6 override for the hostname. $ getent hosts cloudflare.com && getent ahosts cloudflare.com 2606:4700::6810:85e5 cloudflare.com 104.16.133.229 STREAM cloudflare.com $ echo "0.0.0.0 cloudflare.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts $ getent hosts cloudflare.com && getent ahosts cloudflare.com 2606:4700::6810:85e5 cloudflare.com 0.0.0.0 STREAM cloudflare.com
floatingatoll 6y ago
Why are you using /etc/hosts to modify the behavior of the Apple resolver system? That’s not how macOS directory services work, and Apple only appears to offers it as a legacy backwards-compat stub with no guarantee of support or effectiveness for modern anything. It’s no surprise that it’s not an effective solution for you.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
judge2020 6y ago
Are you also writing :: domain.example Because the difference is gethostbynamev2 (the most likely function being used, or I suppose the Apple equivalent) looks up a ipv6 hostname before it looks up a ipv4 hostname, which means a "0.0.0.0 domain.example" entry won't override the result of ipv6 lookups. $ echo "0.0.0.0 cloudflare.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts $ getent hosts cloudflare.com && getent ahosts cloudflare.com 2606:4700::6810:85e5 cloudflare.com 0.0.0.0 STREAM cloudflare.com
- user3939382 6y ago
  I disabled IPv6 altogether, and Apple’s processes are still finding a way to resolve their real IPs after my DNS and /etc/hosts resolved their domains to 0.0.0.0. DNS should be enough, I shouldn’t have to black hole Apple’s entire /8 to stop macOS from phoning home when I’m not using the computer and no apps are running.
  - lilyball 6y ago
    I suspect the number of macOS machines on networks with misconfigured DNS is far higher than the number of macOS machines whose admins want to prevent them from talking to Apple. So I’m glad they’re going to great lengths to preserve their ability to communicate with Apple even under adverse network conditions.
    - user3939382 6y ago
      I appreciate giving people the benefit of the doubt, but this feels overly charitable to me. I doubt they’re worried about accidentally misconfigured /etc/hosts files. Much more likely is that they were aware of outbound firewalls like Little Snitch and want to evade user attempts to block their software, as discussed in the main article here.