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Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

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51–60 of 79 posts

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on a ship part of the year. Satellite internet shared between 50 people. These Apple updates would saturate the network and grind it to a halt before we started blocking them on the firewall. iMessage got caught in the crossfire and now sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

^ This is why you should always be able to turn off automatic downloading of updates.

And you can. Doesn't mean all your users' personal devices comply with the request to do so.

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This is why you should always be able to turn off automatic downloading of updates.

And you can. Doesn't mean all your users' personal devices comply with the request to do so.

On iOS? iPhones don't update automatically (if you tell them not to), but I'm not aware of a way to stop them from downloading updates, other than weird workarounds like installing a tvOS beta profile.

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#53
post #14

Be nice if they could patch a kernel bug in macOS with less than a 1.5GB download.

It might seem strange, but they are using a change/build/deploy mechanism designed to deliver updates to any and all parts of an OS across a range of hardware devices. I'm pretty sure the mechanism, from end-to-end, is complex, and providing an optimized path for small changes would require resources, introduce more risk, and come at the expense of something else. Sucks, though, for everyone who doesn't have a reason…

Sure but Fedora and RHEL (for example) manage to do this for all updates on a small fraction of the budget.

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been corrected by you when quoting from inaccurate sources on iOS and jailbreak related info, thanks for what you do and how you go about it. You're curt and courteous, which can come off as being short, but you're always accurate in my experience. I don't think you should worry too much about people thinking you're an astroturfer, because those who know the technical side know that you know your s…

Thanks for the kind words, but you'll find that I'm not always right ;)

How did you know I read your blog? :P

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on a ship part of the year. Satellite internet shared between 50 people. These Apple updates would saturate the network and grind it to a halt before we started blocking them on the firewall. iMessage got caught in the crossfire and now sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

If you have at least one Mac, you can use Content Caching: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-cac... It works for iCloud content, too.

I tried to make that work, but it didn't seem to do anything. Repeat downloads took just as long as before.

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#57
post #8

From the equivalent macOS patch: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211215 > Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, macOS Catalina 10.15.5 That's interesting—did the bug exist on both 10.13 and 10.15, but not 10.14?

Oh dear. My laptop is saying 10.15.4 is the latest. Huh.

try `softwareupdate -l`

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have at least one Mac, you can use Content Caching: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-cac... It works for iCloud content, too.

I tried to make that work, but it didn't seem to do anything. Repeat downloads took just as long as before.

you can verify if Content Cache is working in a couple ways... first, while installing the update, you should see a CPU usage spike in Activity Monitor for the process "AssetCache".

secondly, you can run this command on the machine you want to upgrade, to verify that it can see your Content Caching Server (it should report the local IP address of the machine you set up Content Caching on) "AssetCacheLocatorUtil"

Re: Apple patches CVE-2020-9859 (unc0ver)

#60
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might seem strange, but they are using a change/build/deploy mechanism designed to deliver updates to any and all parts of an OS across a range of hardware devices. I'm pretty sure the mechanism, from end-to-end, is complex, and providing an optimized path for small changes would require resources, introduce more risk, and come at the expense of something else. Sucks, though, for everyone who doesn't have a reason…

That’s not an axiomatic truth. Binary diff algorithms exist (ask me, I’ve written several) that can identify and isolate changes across versions even when content is changed at non-block boundaries, non-contiguously, etc and while they are computationally expensive patches to create, they are trivial to unpack/apply. But generally the software industry has moved to a model where diffs are shunned and “recreate from s…

That's not universally true. Android makes significant use of binary diffs for patching to reduce OTA upgrade sizes, for example. However they're not appropriate for all situations, and there's a bunch of legitimate reasons Apple may have chosen not to pursue this for kernel updates.
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