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How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

applehelpwriter.com

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Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#221

Post by Johnny555 »

guitarbill wrote: post #205
jimmaswell wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you even do that? What nefarious and yet undiscovered things did you think DropBox was likely to do specifically with the accessibility permission? Permission systems in general seem like a solution without a problem to me. Nobody but a minority of people very concerned about theoretical security problems wanted them on platforms that didn't have them, almost nobody cares what permissions programs use on pl…

Right, they have all your files already, so there's clearly some level of trust.

They only have (well should only have) access to the files I share on Dropbox, which is pretty much just music files, so if someone steals those files, I won't be too upset.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#222

Post by [deleted] »

newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

[deleted]

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#223

Post by [deleted] »

newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

[deleted]

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#224

Post by JoshMnem »

ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

AMP is terrible for publishers though. It would be better if the site would publish simpler HTML/JS than use AMP.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#225

Post by odbol_ »

tomku wrote: post #6

Non-clickbait title: "How Dropbox uses the root access that you give it during installation to give itself Accessibility authorization without triggering the usual popup".

Lots of people getting mad at Dropbox for this, which is fine, but should we not also get mad at Apple for making their "security" system so easy to circumvent?

Being an app developer that was bitten in the ass by the new "security" in El Crapitan, and having spent 2 weeks trying to get our app back to normal, this makes me really mad that Apple makes us developers jump through all these hoops for security that isn't actually secure anyway.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#226

Post by odbol_ »

new299 wrote: post #29

Dropbox circumventing security restrictions (albeit for legit reasons) is particularly worrying because they have board members who support warrentless surveillance. In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ( http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ ). Personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the securi…

This is why you use their web interface and don't install any of their hackware on your devices.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#227

Post by djsumdog »

bitwize wrote: post #113
ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

Why not an "HTML with minimal styles and no JavaScript" version? Oh wait, that's not reactive.

It can be:

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#229

Post by gr2020 »

ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

I'd be a lot happier with AMP if they'd stop hijacking the scrolling behavior on iOS (speed and momentum is different than on a regular web page). It drives me absolutely crazy.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#230

Post by djsumdog »

antoncohen wrote: post #165

I have given Dropbox access to my files, admins rights, and ability to run in the kernel. I'm not freaking out about the Accessibility API. setuid binaries: $ tree -p /Library/DropboxHelperTools/ /Library/DropboxHelperTools/ ├── [-r-s--x--x] DropboxHelperInstaller └── [drwxr-xr-x] Dropbox_u501 ├── [-r-s--x--x] dbaccessperm ├── [-r-s--x--x] dbfseventsd └── [-r-s--x--x] dbkextd kernel extension: $ kextstat -b com.getdr…

Dropbox on Linux needs none of that. Sure it doesn't have the fancy icons in file managers, but it also runs in user-space without a kernel module.
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