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macOS will soon block unknown USB-C accessories by default
- behnamoh 4y agoThis is not pushing the industry; this is outright user hostile.
- rektide 4y agoEveryone will gladly swallow the line that it's for their protection. I miss the exciting & hopeful era of computing. Today, everyone is happy to go jump into cages. And thank the jailer for keeping them safe there. More open & interoperating magic needs to be visible, to make the open world more visible again. Because the open world, the world of general purpose computing, has many many growing forces against it.
- rektide 4y agoApologies, I read the article. This is a fine change, no argument. I thought they were going to allowlist known peripherals, & refuse to talk to anything not approved.
- Someone 4y agoDid you miss the “by default” part? External devices have been security holes at least since FireWire because they can read and write memory via DMA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack)
- jjtheblunt 4y agoif you're not kidding, it seems you didn't read the article, which explains why it exists to protect users
- Vladimof 4y agoDoes that have anything to do with the EU forcing them to have USB-C?
- warning26 4y agoNo, the article noted that iOS devices have been doing something similar since iOS 12.
- warning26 4y agoOn the one hand, I can see how this could be useful to mitigate vulnerabilities from malicious USB charge stations. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_jacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_jacking) On the other hand, what happens if you need to connect an "unapproved" keyboard for the first time, and your hardware keyboard is malfunctioning?
- mrbuttons454 4y agoThe keyboard issue should be easy enough to solve. Perhaps they can request you enter a few characters displayed on screen to authorize the new keyboard.
- mwint 4y agoLeaves you vulnerable to people who can see your screen, but aren’t you. Trusted input should only be accepted from already-trusted input devices.
- MR4D 4y agoRTFA, people! > A new security feature in Apple’s upcoming macOS 13 Ventura will automatically block new USB-C devices from communicating with the operating system until the accessory can be approved by the user. > According to Apple’s description, the feature will be enabled by default and will require the user to approve a USB-C accessory before it can talk to the operating system — essentially an on-screen pop-up asking the user for permission. How is this bad? This is exactly what I want - it gives me added protection at very little effort.
- Veliladon 4y agoFWIW, this isn't about making a Made for iPhone ecosystem for keyboards and mice. This is about the DMA features that are going to be in USB4 going forwards and that are already in Thunderbolt/Firewire/PCI Express. This security is specifically so that someone can't walk over to your machine, plug in a device, DMA all of your machine's physical memory to its flash, and then walk off with whatever data or secrets that are hanging out in RAM.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoIf you are traveling through an airport, security staff can't confiscate your laptop and plug a mystery machine to it with this feature?
- ksaj 4y agoThis is a really good question. I would not be surprised if there is a court challenge to maintain this capability, whether electronically or by requiring the owner to provide that access, in countries that routinely do this.
- mkj 4y agoI wonder if it will have to prompt every time. USB devices don't have any cryptographically secure identity, so macos couldn't be sure it's the same device seen before. Though perhaps limiting to a previously seen PID/VID gives a bit of protection.