2 ms·
I suspect that Oakley could have explained that, but the thesis stands even without the asterisk, and explaining it would have an issue: This is going to piss
by zbentley 9mo ago
I suspect that Oakley could have explained that, but the thesis stands even without the asterisk, and explaining it would have an issue:
This is going to piss off some Linux folks, but when communicating from a big pulpit about how to bypass parts of MacOS, it's important to be aware that the vast majority of MacOS users are casual, nontechnical users. As such, a popular blog posting "here's how to bypass SIP/SSV lock/whatever" would lead to a wave of users disabling it for less-than-great reasons (aesthetics, conviction that e.g. a given service was causing their system slowness when that service's resource usage was actually symptomatic of something else orchestrated by MacOS going wrong). Those decisions have side effects:
- Folks brick or break their computers, potentially in a way that voids the warranty or support contracts (I hope that software bypasses don't trigger this, but I am cynical).
- Folks chasing a "cleanliness vibe" leave a lot of the system security off once they're done. Someone else in this thread pointed out that without SSV the security of MacOS is on par with most Linux, but MacOS users are a lot bigger attack risk than Linux users: there are more of them, they're wealthier and thus identified as targets of choice by malware/people, and, again--they're casual users and don't have good security spider sense. This isn't a blanket endorsement of every restriction/security feature with no opt-out that MacOS has, just an observation that its userbase is at higher risk for attack than some others--lower than windows, but higher than Linux users.
- Folks induce breakage that bricks their computers on a delay, e.g. during the next system update something chokes after encountering a totally unauthorized/unexpected service geometry and crashes hard enough to cause data loss.
I'm not saying that stuff like SSV-rw should be secret, just that it's probably for the best to not discuss it front and center in a widely-read informational blog whose content is geared towards (power) users rather than technicians. To phrase it with a different example: if someone Googles "how to disable XProtect (antimalware)", great, go nuts. But it's probably for the best that a popular article about "can you reduce resource usage by shutting down system launchd services" doesn't have a "here's how to elevate your permissions and disable whatever you like" blurb, and instead settles for an answer of "no, that's not supported."
- pjmlp 9mo agoIf you want to piss off even more, those that buy Apple only because they want a shinny UNIX, but don't buy into Apple's culture since Mac OS Classic days, you only need to remind them that Steve Jobs was hardly a UNIX fanboy. Just like with Microsoft strategies, for NeXT, having NeXTSTEP being based on UNIX was more to check boxes against Sun, and bring software into the platform, not to make it easy to go out, hence the whole userspace stack, even drivers, are based on Objective-C frameworks. "Why We Have to Make UNIX Invisible." https://www.usenix.org/blog/vault-steve-jobs-keynotes-1987-usenix-atc https://www.usenix.org/blog/vault-steve-jobs-keynotes-1987-u... > They said a Unix weenie was code for software engineers who hated what we were doing to Unix (the operating system we licensed)—putting a graphical user interface on it to dumb it down for grandmothers. They heckled Steve about his efforts to destroy it. His nightmare would be to speak to a crowd of them. https://web.archive.org/web/20180628214613/https://www.cake.co/conversations/rZXhqtP/that-time-i-had-steve-jobs-keynote-at-unix-expo https://web.archive.org/web/20180628214613/https://www.cake.... "NeXT marketing strategy video (1991)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBIH0CA7ZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBIH0CA7ZU
- zbentley 9mo agoYou sure you're replying to the right post? I wasn't really engaging with the "is it UNIX or not" debates elsewhere in the parent threads; just talking about why security bypass wasn't mentioned in TFA.
- pjmlp 9mo agoYes I am, > This is going to piss off some Linux folks, but when communicating from a big pulpit about how to bypass parts of MacOS, it's important to be aware that the vast majority of MacOS users are casual, nontechnical users. See Steve Jobs remark about grandmothers.
- zbentley 9mo agoAh, I see now, thanks. I think "people who want a UNIX" are pretty rare. Most of the folks who say things that rhyme with that at FOSDEM (as you mentioned in an adjacent thread) are, I'd bet, more likely to be "people who want something Unix-adjacent and similar enough to Linux that behavior of some tools is familiar". They're still likely to be tilted by the idea that it might be less-than-ethical for hoakley to share security bypass techniques on a popular blog, though. Nobody likes to be told "no", and nobody likes to be reminded they're not the target demographic.
- philistine 9mo ago> those that buy Apple only because they want a shinny UNIX Those people don’t exist. People buy Apple for many good reasons; this isn’t one of them.
- pjmlp 9mo agoYes they do, you only have to walk FOSDEM corridors to find them.
- philistine 9mo agoThere are DOZENS of us!