8 ms·

It seems like this is a bug, apple went through the trouble to allow something like asahi to be possible in the first place. I doubt they're purposely trying to

It seems like this is a bug, apple went through the trouble to allow something like asahi to be possible in the first place. I doubt they're purposely trying to break it.

amelius 4mo ago
(removed)
- wpm 4mo ago
  If the happy path disappears, the not-so-happy path will be taken to allow for booting custom kernels, one that will likely rely on turning the some or a lot of the RE energy towards breaking the Secure Enclave, the bootloader, and so on. Apple practically laid the red carpet out to avoid people trying to crack the parts of the hardware/software chain-of-trust they would really rather not have cracked. A similar strategy helped keep the Xbox One un-pwned for over a decade (running homebrew was allowed in a specific mode). It is doubtful Apple's legal department isn't aware of the value of the current software strategy.
  - CjHuber 4mo ago
    So isn't that just purely security by obscurity then? Would they not rather have someone publicly break it instead of selling a zero day?
    - wpm 4mo ago
      Nothing is perfectly secure on its own. No system designed or checked by humans ever will be. After all, the Xbox One was indeed pwned, relatively recently. However, because the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for so long, it got pwned years after it was a relevant, money making console. Novel jailbreaks for ancient iPhones are not worth much. But attention on current, brand new devices means increasing the danger that a mistake gets found, which increases the odds that that mistake is found by someone who wants to sell it for the most money. Also, from Apple's perspective a zero-day in the bootloader on macOS also means a zero-day in the bootloader in all of the billions of iOS devices out there too. They do not want to give anyone anymore reason than what already exists to try and pwn LLB or iBoot. Given a happy path, all of that hacker energy for "put Linux on my M1 Macbook" is put towards device drivers and support, rather than "how the hell do we get an alternative kernel booting on this thing". Fewer bullets pinging off the armor. Fewer cracks in the fuselage forming. Fewer knives to dodge. All of it means Apple's boot process for their current devices are less likely to be pwned before they turn into e-waste (whenever that is, not making a comment on Apple's perhaps accelerated or otherwise practices in obsolescence). Just like a jetliner will eventually succumb to entropy and become dangerous to fly, so too will a lot of "secure" software. You only need to actively maintain a jetliner while it is flying passengers or cargo. Once it is retired, it can rot, people can break into the husk of it at the junkyard and fornicate and smoke crack and smash windows and steal parts of the fuselage. At that point, who cares?
- kmeisthax 4mo ago
  No, if their lawyers want it gone, Apple will just update the bootloader to reject local signing keys. The actual problem was that Apple has an undocumented APFS key for if a volume is bootable, which Asahi wasn't setting and Apple wasn't checking, but now they do, so they do.
GeekyBear 4mo ago
Apple designed a bootloader for Apple Silicon Macs that allows you to run an unsigned OS without degrading security when you boot into MacOS. This wasn't an accident. Macs have always allowed you to run another OS. iDevices have always had a locked bootloader. People shouldn't confuse the two.
- phire 4mo ago
  And if Apple were going to change their mind and try to block linux, they would intentionally modify the bootloader to remove that functionality, not break the boot picker.
- hollow-moe 4mo ago
  M series macs are weird tho, yes the bootloader allows it but absolutely no documentation on the hardware, drivers etc. Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes, but for development purposes(and ye they could hide the feature behind apple account with paid dev license) or anti-anti-trust measures à-la Google with Firefox: in front of a jury of normal people they can simply say "look there's these nerds making Asahi" the same way "look we're not a monopoly Firefox has .2% market share".
  - benoau 4mo ago
    I think they are wary about macOS becoming a designated DMA gatekeeper, it would certainly be very close to the user and income thresholds.
  - GeekyBear 4mo ago
    > M series macs are weird More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over? > Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes Apple has explicitly stated that allowing third party OSes is exactly the purpose of the new bootloader.
    - amiga386 4mo ago
zozbot234 4mo ago
Such bugs have happened and been reported before. Asahi exercises "raw boot" facilities that just don't get all that much attention in any other context.
kjs3 4mo ago
You get clicks for "Apple bad", not for "there was this boot flag and once we figured that out problem solved".
- bigyabai 4mo ago
  It's Apple's bootloader. They were the ones that chose to use iBoot and not implement UEFI-style booting like prior Macs.
  - throawayonthe 4mo ago
    ...why would they, this is a strict improvement with less surface area
    - bigyabai 4mo ago
      Because it was a featureset they supported without trouble on prior Macs? The onus is on Apple to not make iBoot suck, they don't get a free pass for Microsoft-level boot volume ignorance.
      - kjs3 4mo ago
        The 'onus' is on Apple to support an OS they never said they'd support, to the potential detriment of the one they do support, because a tiny number of people bought Apple hardware to run...lemme look again...an OS Apple never said they'd support? That's an...interesting...point of view, but probably not suprising considering the pervasive "how dare you not do unpaid work to make me happy no matter what your priorities are" attitude running around OSS these days. At least Apple won't rage-quit the project or have a nervous breakdown because the free-riders are demanding something never promised.
- adrian_b 4mo ago
  The boot flag was undocumented, like most features of Apple devices that are required knowledge for being able to port another operating system to them. Because of this lack of documentation, every release of a new version of Apple hardware or software may require the restarting of the reverse engineering work, like in this case, just to keep working the alternative operating system.
ActorNightly 4mo ago
>apple went through the trouble to allow something like asahi to be possible in the first place if going through trouble means "doing less shit to lock their systems down", then yes. Apple ultimately dgaf about linux.

It seems like this is a bug, apple went through the trouble to allow something like asahi to be possible in the first place. I doubt they're purposely trying to break it.

amelius 4mo ago

(removed)

wpm 4mo ago
If the happy path disappears, the not-so-happy path will be taken to allow for booting custom kernels, one that will likely rely on turning the some or a lot of the RE energy towards breaking the Secure Enclave, the bootloader, and so on. Apple practically laid the red carpet out to avoid people trying to crack the parts of the hardware/software chain-of-trust they would really rather not have cracked. A similar strategy helped keep the Xbox One un-pwned for over a decade (running homebrew was allowed in a specific mode). It is doubtful Apple's legal department isn't aware of the value of the current software strategy.
- CjHuber 4mo ago
  So isn't that just purely security by obscurity then? Would they not rather have someone publicly break it instead of selling a zero day?
  - wpm 4mo ago
    Nothing is perfectly secure on its own. No system designed or checked by humans ever will be. After all, the Xbox One was indeed pwned, relatively recently. However, because the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for so long, it got pwned years after it was a relevant, money making console. Novel jailbreaks for ancient iPhones are not worth much. But attention on current, brand new devices means increasing the danger that a mistake gets found, which increases the odds that that mistake is found by someone who wants to sell it for the most money. Also, from Apple's perspective a zero-day in the bootloader on macOS also means a zero-day in the bootloader in all of the billions of iOS devices out there too. They do not want to give anyone anymore reason than what already exists to try and pwn LLB or iBoot. Given a happy path, all of that hacker energy for "put Linux on my M1 Macbook" is put towards device drivers and support, rather than "how the hell do we get an alternative kernel booting on this thing". Fewer bullets pinging off the armor. Fewer cracks in the fuselage forming. Fewer knives to dodge. All of it means Apple's boot process for their current devices are less likely to be pwned before they turn into e-waste (whenever that is, not making a comment on Apple's perhaps accelerated or otherwise practices in obsolescence). Just like a jetliner will eventually succumb to entropy and become dangerous to fly, so too will a lot of "secure" software. You only need to actively maintain a jetliner while it is flying passengers or cargo. Once it is retired, it can rot, people can break into the husk of it at the junkyard and fornicate and smoke crack and smash windows and steal parts of the fuselage. At that point, who cares?
kmeisthax 4mo ago
No, if their lawyers want it gone, Apple will just update the bootloader to reject local signing keys. The actual problem was that Apple has an undocumented APFS key for if a volume is bootable, which Asahi wasn't setting and Apple wasn't checking, but now they do, so they do.

GeekyBear 4mo ago

Apple designed a bootloader for Apple Silicon Macs that allows you to run an unsigned OS without degrading security when you boot into MacOS. This wasn't an accident. Macs have always allowed you to run another OS. iDevices have always had a locked bootloader. People shouldn't confuse the two.

phire 4mo ago
And if Apple were going to change their mind and try to block linux, they would intentionally modify the bootloader to remove that functionality, not break the boot picker.
hollow-moe 4mo ago
M series macs are weird tho, yes the bootloader allows it but absolutely no documentation on the hardware, drivers etc. Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes, but for development purposes(and ye they could hide the feature behind apple account with paid dev license) or anti-anti-trust measures à-la Google with Firefox: in front of a jury of normal people they can simply say "look there's these nerds making Asahi" the same way "look we're not a monopoly Firefox has .2% market share".
- benoau 4mo ago
  I think they are wary about macOS becoming a designated DMA gatekeeper, it would certainly be very close to the user and income thresholds.
- GeekyBear 4mo ago
  > M series macs are weird More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over? > Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes Apple has explicitly stated that allowing third party OSes is exactly the purpose of the new bootloader.
  - amiga386 4mo ago

zozbot234 4mo ago

Such bugs have happened and been reported before. Asahi exercises "raw boot" facilities that just don't get all that much attention in any other context.

kjs3 4mo ago

You get clicks for "Apple bad", not for "there was this boot flag and once we figured that out problem solved".

bigyabai 4mo ago
It's Apple's bootloader. They were the ones that chose to use iBoot and not implement UEFI-style booting like prior Macs.
- throawayonthe 4mo ago
  ...why would they, this is a strict improvement with less surface area
  - bigyabai 4mo ago
    Because it was a featureset they supported without trouble on prior Macs? The onus is on Apple to not make iBoot suck, they don't get a free pass for Microsoft-level boot volume ignorance.
    - kjs3 4mo ago
      The 'onus' is on Apple to support an OS they never said they'd support, to the potential detriment of the one they do support, because a tiny number of people bought Apple hardware to run...lemme look again...an OS Apple never said they'd support? That's an...interesting...point of view, but probably not suprising considering the pervasive "how dare you not do unpaid work to make me happy no matter what your priorities are" attitude running around OSS these days. At least Apple won't rage-quit the project or have a nervous breakdown because the free-riders are demanding something never promised.
adrian_b 4mo ago
The boot flag was undocumented, like most features of Apple devices that are required knowledge for being able to port another operating system to them. Because of this lack of documentation, every release of a new version of Apple hardware or software may require the restarting of the reverse engineering work, like in this case, just to keep working the alternative operating system.

ActorNightly 4mo ago

>apple went through the trouble to allow something like asahi to be possible in the first place if going through trouble means "doing less shit to lock their systems down", then yes. Apple ultimately dgaf about linux.