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Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

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Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#361
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not after Catalina. Future versions of macOS will require signed software (notarized as per Apple terminology), even outside of the store. What is new in security at WWDC.

Signed is not the same to Sandboxed on macOS, afaik.

It's not, but sandboxing requires code signing.

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#362
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signed is not the same to Sandboxed on macOS, afaik.

Watch the security talk. macOS is on the path to adopt iOS permissions model and long term roadmap is to apply the sandbox to everything, with the option to explicitly disable it on per-case basis. A path similar to how Windows 10 is now converging the Win32 and UWP sanbox models, or how ChromeOS sandboxes GNU/Linux processes.

> macOS is on the path to adopt iOS permissions model and long term roadmap is to apply the sandbox to everything

I do not see where this is mentioned.

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#363
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not after Catalina. Future versions of macOS will require signed software (notarized as per Apple terminology), even outside of the store. What is new in security at WWDC.

That will be the Mac books death. Many open source projects will not participate in this. If this kills brew you will also loose a lot of devs.

This doesn't kill package managers like Homebrew.

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#364
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and all of those are decisions you can go along with or reject. Deciding how big an organization you will join is one of many ways you apply your ethics.

That’s another issue. As an organization is viewed as less ethical, only less ethical people join creating a downward spiral.

Hopefully the unethical organization develops a reputation for being unethical. Then only unethical people will patronize said organization. Ideally, unethical behaviour leads to marginalization, though obviously that does not always happen in practice.

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#365

That's pretty epic. Apple continues to make big, brave moral gestures (like when they yanked Facebook and Google's enterprise certs earlier this year, or killed long-term tracking cookies in Safari overnight). Makes me happy to be a customer. Hope they keep enforcing their own rules and protecting their users' privacy and security in this fearless manner.

I still think Apple products are built on human rights abuses. I am currently trying to parse their most recent conflict minerals disclosure. It doesn't explicitly say "yes" but also doesn't clearly say "conflict-free" either.

Note that conflict-free at this time is so hard to be practically impossible. Fairphone, a company and phone founded explicitly with the goal of producing a phone without conflict minerals, still isn't conflict-free, and it's not for lack of trying.

Sure, Apple has more leverage, considering their size, but that also comes with its own set of problems. Plus, their customers have nowhere to go to in protest - all other phones are full of conflict minerals too.

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with this. I can always leave Apple and go to Linux if they do something drastic.

After years of pouring thousands of dollars into Apple's coffers you expect that Linux will still be there when you need it... Real principles would involve switching now.

a) (s)he did set out his principle - that (s)he'd switch if Apple did something found personally egregious. Isn't this a sufficiently reasonable principle to follow?

b) Linux seems pretty solid, no...?

c) I'd argue that a better position might be 'support Linux now, in case you need it in the future'.

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#369
post #81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed a company's "morals" are better exposed when it has to make inconvenient choices.

I would say true morals lead to structuring your company in such a way that you don’t have to rely on business people making ethical decisions moment to moment, because they won’t.

You can certainly form a company whose line of business minimizes how many ethical questions it will face; I'd consider that to be ducking out and ultimately less moral than entering a business where there are genuinely tough ethical questions that you will need to take positions on (and inevitably sometimes get wrong).

Re: Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

#370
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has done silent updates for Gatekeeper, the macOS code signing/file quarantine/light anti-malware framework ever since Yosemite. These are done silently unless you explicitly disable all updates and only show up as a visible item when you manually list updates using the softwareupdate command line tool, I think. AFAIK these are just config files and hash databases or similar. You can view the history of these i…

> These are done silently unless you explicitly disable all updates You can turn off silent security updates from System Preferences without affecting software update checks for other components.

It seems that unticking this checkbox causes those updates to be disabled completely (and not just converted into visible updates in the Software Updater that you have the option of installing, like I thought it would). I had that option unticked and my last "MRTConfigData" update was a year out of date.

The option is called "Automatically: Install system data files and security updates" in the Software Update advanced settings.

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