Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

mac4n6.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 123 posts

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#41

Post by Johnny555 »

772396 wrote: post #40

To be fair, does linux/unix system also has similar thing? If the cmd tool supports passing the password as argument, it is supposed to be logged in whatever logging facility in the system. I am not aware of a feature to sanitize the password argument. The usual way is the cmd tool supports supplying password as password prompt, and the user should always supply the password in the prompt except testing purpose. So,…

So, I think it is more like a UI problem then a vulnerability

It's both, it's a vulnerability in how the UI calls the CLI command. Passing the password on the command line is bad for a number of reasons, not just because it can end up in a log file.

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#42

Post by cjbprime »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #39
cjbprime wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what's your threat model? Surely you're not imagining that you can pass data from one process to another without root being able to see it? (On Linux, since you're using /proc.) Other users' processes can't see /proc/$pid/environ, unlike using cmdline.

Don't recall right now for sure, but doesn't ps have an option to display the processes environment? I've done it by accident a few times and it does not take root.

It has an option (e) to attempt to display environment variables, but ps is just a program that reads from /proc, and the kernel enforces isolation of environment variables by breaking reads to /proc/pid/environ for processes you don't own (or more precisely, can't ptrace), so `ps e` can't show anything for those processes.

  λ whoami
  cjb
  λ cat /proc/1/cmdline
  /sbin/init%
  λ cat /proc/1/environ
  cat: /proc/1/environ: Permission denied

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#43

Post by untog »

mygo wrote: post #36
untog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What new features do users gain from the new file system?

being able to duplicate a 1GB directory in an instant

Is that a new feature? Isn't that just a performance improvement?

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#44

Post by adanto6840 »

tortilla wrote: post #37
m_mueller wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you deal with the constant update prompts? ignoring them, or is there some defaults system key that can be used to turn them off?

https://appletoolbox.com/2018/01/disable-macos-software-upda...

You rock, thank you very much.

Shame on Apple for the "control click on a hidden control" design pattern in order to stop the update messages. After not seeing an option to hide it, my morning ritual lately had consisted of clicking "Details" button and then quickly CMD+Q'ing out of the MAS dialog that popped up. Glad it's finally disabled, but really kind of ridiculous that it was literally a hidden option.

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#45

Post by Gaelan »

ggg9990 wrote: post #28

Windows users have long waited a year to install new versions. If Mac users did the same they would have fewer such problems.

Windows 10, of course, gives you no choice but to install new versions immediately (besides enterprise deployments, of course). Apple's updates are getting sloppy, but at least they're optional.

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#46

Post by csydas »

Someone1234 wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they just deployed a whole new FS to 100s of millions of users, in record time, with almost zero incidents. Hardly any new features...

> new FS [...] in record time That's an odd brag. I might be from a bygone era but it used to be the case that filesystems were particularly conservative and rollouts equally so. Getting one deployed in "record time" is hardly difficult because everyone else is so conservative it can take tens of years in some cases. Look at Microsoft's ReFS, available in Server 2012, 2012 R2, Windows 8.1, Server 2016 and Windows 10…

It isn't the default version because currently it can't be booted from.

ReFS is a pure storage-style File System, and it's been full of headaches since release for those trying to use it as such. Comparing it to APFS isn't really reasonable as they're meaning to accomplish two different goals both systems. (Keep in mind, some of the bugs that ReFS had included silent corruption on files over 2 TB, which is kind of important for even the upper-end of the small business spectrum when it comes to data. [1] Even with that many technical previews and idling in beta for many iterations, they missed a pretty big show-stopper for ReFS, which has no built in volume repair since it's not supposed to break. (To clarify, there is Integrity Streams, but it's more that if you still see corruption with Integrity Streams running, MS has no more tools in its kit to assist)

I get what you're saying, you don't want to watch a FileSystem do the 200 meter, you wanna see it's averages across several marathons, and I agree. However, what is important to take from such an install base is that so far the reports have been embarrassing implementations of stuff around the filesystem, not the filesystem itself not doing what it should. The fact that users aren't howling about data silently corrupting or extreme system slowdowns is a fairly good portend thus far, Apple's sloppiness on the surrounding code not-withstanding. APFS being stable doesn't excuse the rest of Apple's mistakes, but I would say separate the two; it's pretty clear APFS was a pretty important project for them, and it's clear where their attention was.

[1] - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2017/01/30/windo...

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#47

Post by zbentley »

untog wrote: post #43
mygo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

being able to duplicate a 1GB directory in an instant

Is that a new feature? Isn't that just a performance improvement?

"What are these 'car' things? Do they really offer new features over horses? Isn't that just a performance improvement?"

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#48

Post by walrus01 »

772396 wrote: post #40

To be fair, does linux/unix system also has similar thing? If the cmd tool supports passing the password as argument, it is supposed to be logged in whatever logging facility in the system. I am not aware of a feature to sanitize the password argument. The usual way is the cmd tool supports supplying password as password prompt, and the user should always supply the password in the prompt except testing purpose. So,…

I could be wrong but I do not think dm-crypt supports CLI passing of the passphrase. It uses interactive prompt only.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_...

Re: Logs in High Sierra Show Plaintext Password for APFS Encrypted External Volumes

#49

Post by jasonmp85 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they just deployed a whole new FS to 100s of millions of users, in record time, with almost zero incidents. Hardly any new features...

> new FS [...] in record time That's an odd brag. I might be from a bygone era but it used to be the case that filesystems were particularly conservative and rollouts equally so. Getting one deployed in "record time" is hardly difficult because everyone else is so conservative it can take tens of years in some cases. Look at Microsoft's ReFS, available in Server 2012, 2012 R2, Windows 8.1, Server 2016 and Windows 10…

How’s that Takata airbag treating you?

Hope it’s as reliable as the acceleration is “unintended”… http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/BarrSlides_FINAL_SCRUB...

Post reply on HN