3 ms·

What was the rational for Apple making the M1 Macs so difficult (for lack of a better way to say it) than the older macs. Example is currently you can't easily

by gist 6y ago

What was the rational for Apple making the M1 Macs so difficult (for lack of a better way to say it) than the older macs. Example is currently you can't easily boot from an external drive [1] a feature that many people found very useful. [2] The answer to the question is not 'oh sure for security reasons'. I am wondering how making it so difficult for what I would call the majority of power or experienced or even regular users to do certain things on an M1 Mac. That is what is gained (so what is it?) vs. what is lost. Who threat is the audience protected against by doing it this way? Or is this just an artifact of the M1 Chip in some way and not something added after the fact? [1] https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/ https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/ [2] You could travel with an external drive and boot from another mac in a pinch.

sys_64738 6y ago
Hardware Root of Trust means you have to assume an external boot device is compromised. Apple have their mechanisms for securing each step in the chain which is they enforce it out of the box. For 95% of users this is fine as it's only advanced experts who would need to use other booting technology after disabling HRoT chain. Apple makes it clear in big bold letters that you're compromising security by using alternative booting technology.
- gist 6y ago
  > Apple makes it clear in big bold letters that you're compromising security by using alternative booting technology. Can you give an example(s) of how you are compromising security? If I make my own boot drive and boot from it how am I compromising security? I can think of scenarios like the following but the way I see it this would be a corner case: "I somehow social engineer making a clone of a person's (say my wife/coworker (not computer literate)) hard/ssd drive. I then figure out a way to make their machine only boot from that drive by simply choosing that as the startup disk. I have installed some malware on that external drive that grabs or does something nefarious". In that case though with that kind of access I could have done similar on their internal drive since I have access to it already." My point is why do we assume that the external boot drive is compromised if it is being created by the person who owns the hardware? This seems like some kind of government or large company protection applied to the entire apple customer base. Why couldn't the device ship with the ability to turn off this protection?
  - sys_64738 6y ago
    HW RoT prevents you from being able to replace OS binaries with compromised versions. How are you going to prove your external boot drive isn't compromised without HW RoT? HW RoT reduces the attack surface available and gives a more secure baseline but sure it can be compromised. But an external drive is the Wild West. This is the reason black sites don't allow support people to bring their own tools onsite as you have to assume they're compromised.
    - dingaling 6y ago
      But assuming that the internal disk data is encrypted and unavailable to the external OS, what does it matter if it has modified kernel modules? The worst it can do is scribble garbage over the cipertext, which is unfortunate but not a security risk.

by gist 6y ago

sys_64738 6y ago

Hardware Root of Trust means you have to assume an external boot device is compromised. Apple have their mechanisms for securing each step in the chain which is they enforce it out of the box. For 95% of users this is fine as it's only advanced experts who would need to use other booting technology after disabling HRoT chain. Apple makes it clear in big bold letters that you're compromising security by using alternative booting technology.

gist 6y ago
> Apple makes it clear in big bold letters that you're compromising security by using alternative booting technology. Can you give an example(s) of how you are compromising security? If I make my own boot drive and boot from it how am I compromising security? I can think of scenarios like the following but the way I see it this would be a corner case: "I somehow social engineer making a clone of a person's (say my wife/coworker (not computer literate)) hard/ssd drive. I then figure out a way to make their machine only boot from that drive by simply choosing that as the startup disk. I have installed some malware on that external drive that grabs or does something nefarious". In that case though with that kind of access I could have done similar on their internal drive since I have access to it already." My point is why do we assume that the external boot drive is compromised if it is being created by the person who owns the hardware? This seems like some kind of government or large company protection applied to the entire apple customer base. Why couldn't the device ship with the ability to turn off this protection?
- sys_64738 6y ago
  HW RoT prevents you from being able to replace OS binaries with compromised versions. How are you going to prove your external boot drive isn't compromised without HW RoT? HW RoT reduces the attack surface available and gives a more secure baseline but sure it can be compromised. But an external drive is the Wild West. This is the reason black sites don't allow support people to bring their own tools onsite as you have to assume they're compromised.
  - dingaling 6y ago
    But assuming that the internal disk data is encrypted and unavailable to the external OS, what does it matter if it has modified kernel modules? The worst it can do is scribble garbage over the cipertext, which is unfortunate but not a security risk.