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Updating from macOS Ventura to Sonoma Silently Enables iCloud Keychain
- saurik 2y agoThis isn't the first time, nor will it be the last: the only reason I'm actually using iCloud Keychain is because, despite always turning it off and feeling like I needed to keep doing it over and over again every time I got a new device, one day I was in a discussion with someone about it and I went to show them how I turn off most of the iCloud features, and I discovered I had actually failed and now had already been using iCloud Keychain and so all my passwords were already in it.
- tailspin2019 2y agoI had the exact same experience with iCloud Drive (or whatever it is/was called) years ago. I kept turning it off and never agreed to use it and one day discovered it was on anyway and a bunch of my stuff was already in the cloud. Pretty egregious behaviour.
- Teever 2y agoYeah this is the kind of behaviour that I'm hoping the EU will step in and regulate. It would be amazing the victims of this kind of egregious privacy violating behavior would receive a cut of the fine that the offender is charged. That would give people an incentive to report this kind of shit.
- saagarjha 2y agoDon’t you feel so much more secure now?
- pritambaral 2y agoCan't tell if sarcasm, but if not: This is precisely the problem. Apple treats its users as dumb cattle. "We know better. Shut up and be happy with what we force down your throat." Of course, Apple can do no wrong. Forced lock-in? "Don't you feel so much more secure now that you're firmly in our garden? Our walled garden that you cannot escape from?"
- plorkyeran 2y agoIsn't the workaround here to back up your keychain file, remove your passwords from the keychain, update to Sonoma, disable iCloud keychain, then import the backup? Not a trivial process, but should be easier than the author's attempted workaround of disabling SIP and installing while offline. Long term I suspect the actual answer will be that if you don't want to use iCloud Keychain then you just can't use the keychain at all, which is a shame as it once was one of the good parts of macOS.
- lapcat 2y ago> should be easier than the author's attempted workaround of disabling SIP and installing while offline Disabling SIP wasn't an issue, because I had already done it to eliminate slow app launches: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/2/3.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/2/3.html On my second attempt, I managed to update without an internet connection. See the new addendum to the article.
- sunshowers 2y ago> Perhaps disabling System Integrity Protection disables the malware scan too? I haven't checked this, but it's not really viable for me as a Mac software developer, because I need to test the same runtime environment as my users, otherwise I could write code that works for me but not for my users. I'd be a bit careful here by the way. Disabling SIP results in other weird differences too, that may cause programs to run for you but not most of your users. For example, LD_ and DYLD_ environment variables are no longer sanitized [1] for system processes. Fun fact: the GitHub Actions Mac environment also disables SIP. So it might run for you and in CI, but not for your users. [1] https://briandfoy.github.io/macos-s-system-integrity-protection-sanitizes-your-environment/ https://briandfoy.github.io/macos-s-system-integrity-protect...
- saagarjha 2y agoWait, why? Seems like a bad thing to do in CI?
- nhod 2y agoi understand and agree that this should at the very least have an opt-in dialog box. that said, apple did add the option for end-to-end encrypted “advanced data protection” for the majority of icloud data a year or so ago. perhaps they also enabled it by default in sonoma? https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756 https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756
- lapcat 2y ago> perhaps they also enabled it by default in sonoma? No, they didn't. Anyway, iCloud Keychain has always been end to end encrypted.
- TillE 2y agoRight, it's obviously end-to-end encrypted because if it weren't, everyone would have been screaming for years about how horrendously insecure it was. iCloud Keychain is fine, just use a good password. There's no particular harm in letting Apple store an encrypted blob for you on its servers.
- SpikeDad 2y agoAnd only enabled if 2FA is enabled. It won't work without (as won't many Apple services).
- adamomada 2y agoThank you, this was the missing piece of the puzzle for me.
- CharlesW 2y agoEven with so-called standard data protection, iCloud Keychain passwords are always end-to-end encrypted, and Apple cannot decrypt them. "For additional privacy and security, 15 data categories — including Health and passwords in iCloud Keychain — are end-to-end encrypted. Apple doesn't have the encryption keys for these categories, and we can't help you recover this data if you lose access to your account." https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
- throw20240511 2y agoGah, I didn’t realize that iCloud Keychain was enabled automatically on ios17. I checked and it’s been on for months. Why would they do this? I remember when Microsoft uploaded people’s personal wifi creds in Windows 10. It’s all highly suspect. Stop it. This over sharing by default will doom us all.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoActually, I figured it out, when an app I wrote, that uses the keychain, started allowing me to log into the app, using Sign in with Apple (which has some stuff that is only available when the login is set up), on devices that were not the ones that I set up. In my case, I liked that, and so will my users. But I do think that it could be problematic, if this means that authorities could now get ahold of your keychain, when having it restricted to a single device, avoids that.
- crooked-v 2y ago> Why would they do this? Because automatically sharing credentials between devices by default is what most people want, especially younger customers for whom this has always been the normal state of affairs.
- jkaplowitz 2y agoWhat you say makes sense for new installs, although even there an explicit and optional consent screen is warranted before doing something as privacy- and security-sensitive as syncing passwords to the cloud. But it's not definitely what's wanted by most people who previously had the feature disabled before the OS update.
- LeoPanthera 2y agoPresumably, only if you already have an iCloud account, and are signed in?
- x3n0ph3n3 2y agoPretty sure that's the case. I don't know why anyone trusts iCloud.
- vbezhenar 2y agoIs it possible to use macOS and iOS without iCloud? I never tried.
- eep_social 2y agomacOS yes, though it breaks a lot of the “just works” style integration. On iOS I don’t know how you’d install anything beyond the apps included out of the box so it would be very limited.
- lapcat 2y ago> On iOS I don’t know how you’d install anything beyond the apps included out of the box so it would be very limited. iCloud and App Store are independent. You can sign in to the App Store but not iCloud. In fact I've never used iCloud on my iPhone.
- brainchild-adam 2y agoHonest question: how? It seems to me that when I sign in to Apple ID, it automatically signs me in to iCloud. I've found this quite annoying.
- lapcat 2y ago> when I sign in to Apple ID, it automatically signs me in to iCloud Don't do that. You can sign in within the App Store app, but don't sign in anywhere else.
- wila 2y agoI had to blink twice last time when I installed Sonoma on a new partition that I did not have to provide a wifi password. This appears to confirm that. While I can understand that some people would appreciate this, I'm not exactly chuffed by a fresh install silently grabbing passwords from an old install.
- LeoPanthera 2y agoThat is not related. Mac computers store the last successful wifi credentials in in the EFI, and use them to give macOS Recovery internet access.
- 38 2y agoThat is fucking terrifying.
- shuckles 2y agoYour laptop storing a Wifi credential locally is terrifying?
- baby_souffle 2y agoI think it’s plain text? Unless recovery environment has a symmetrical encryption scheme and it can decrypt the cypher text stored in nvram?
- adamomada 2y agoI just checked nvram -p It has the SSID in plaintext in current-network and preferred-network, not the passphrase. I’m not sure how it’s obfuscated or encrypted but it is not plaintext
- 38 2y agoits storing it on the god damn motherboard, not a flashdrive or something
- Ophuscado 2y agoAbout suspicious things lately, I remember that it regenerated my FileVault (disk encryption) password after the past two updates. It happened to more people out there.
- m463 2y agoIf people wonder about things, they should install Little Snitch and see how often apple apps phone home. It's amazing. Not only after install, but hours and days later will apps start quietly phoning home.
- plausibility 2y agoOne thing I learned from using Little Snitch is that a lot of Apple apps are seemingly immune from these types of firewalls, due to Apple shenanigans around k-ext signing etc [0]. Ref also [1]: > In Big Sur Apple decided to exempt many of its apps from being routed thru the frameworks they now require 3rd-party firewalls to use (LuLu, Little Snitch, etc.) > Q: Could this be (ab)used by malware to also bypass such firewalls? > A: Apparently yes, and trivially so [0] https://x.com/patrickwardle/status/1318437929497235457 https://x.com/patrickwardle/status/1318437929497235457 [1] https://x.com/patrickwardle/status/1327726496203476992 https://x.com/patrickwardle/status/1327726496203476992
- lapcat 2y agoApple removed the exclusion list: https://obdev.at/blog/a-wall-without-a-hole/ https://obdev.at/blog/a-wall-without-a-hole/
- plausibility 2y agoHuh, that was a pretty quick turn around for Apple, glad to know. Now if only they'd stop trying to get me to enable iCloud Drive just because I use an iPhone for work.
- Sporktacular 2y agoThis is not longer the case. But another way around is the way VMWare Fusion let you set up networking in Bridged mode. Any traffic from the VM went through without a peep from Little Snitch running on the host. No reason malware couldn't be designed in the same way.
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- rdl 2y agoIt didn't for me.
- Razengan 2y agoAn example of "Keychain" abuse is how Facebook so disgustingly tracks you even after you delete all apps, and can track you even after you restore an iCloud Backup ON A NEW PHONE! • It shows my previous accounts even after I delete the app. • Clearing Safari's cache does not work. • Disabling iCloud Drive and iCloud Keychain does not work. • Even completely signing out of iCloud does not work! ---- WHY can't the user see this data? WHY can't the user delete this data without going through the app? WHAT ELSE do apps store on our devices that we aren't even aware of? (This is just what we can see: The list of saved accounts for "quick login") HOW MANY other apps are secretly doing this? WHY does Apple even allow this in the first place?? Worst of all, WHY aren't more people raising more of a ruckus about this extremely appalling practice?!
- banku_brougham 2y agoNobody mentioned this so far, here goes: The latest 'national security' bill signed into law this April grants the US govt access to any and all commercial hardware. This as I understand it, am I wrong? Doesnt this imply that every cloud service should be assumed insecure?
- plorkyeran 2y agoEvery cloud service should be assumed insecure, but not because of some new law.
- luke-stanley 2y agoFor people who like the Apple Mac, running an open-source OS on it is usually possible, right?
- yencabulator 2y agoThe hardware tends to be very proprietary. You can make some parts of it work, but is that worth it?
- woleium 2y agoThis would put me in breach of NDAs that i have to work under if it happened to me. I guess i could claim damages from Apple?