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Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

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Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#251

Post by wil421 »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #237
my123 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the M1, that's by design. If you install macOS on an external volume it doesn't have that behaviour. On the internal disk, it's there because they carried over the iOS infrastructure, where your login password is the FDE one. macOS also now boots before asking for your password, like iOS. (the OS volume itself isn't encrypted and is read-only, the data volume is encrypted with your password)

> (the OS volume itself isn't encrypted and is read-only, the data volume is encrypted with your password) Wait, WHAT? Can someone with an M1 encrypted volume Mac check this directory and see if you see thumbnails? > $TMPDIR/../C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/ A full writeup of this is at the link [1]. This has been a well-known thing in computer forensics for many years, which is why *full* disk encryption is s…

No such file or directory on my M1 Air.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#252

Post by fennecfoxen »

catmanjan wrote: post #230
heinrichhartman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By choosing which markets you operate in and which products you develop you have a fair bit of influence which things are in your "financial interest". E.g. creating a company with a business model which benefits from taxing CO2 emissions (Tesla) is morally great. Whereas having a business model which benefits from cheap oil (VW) is less so. Product decisions (electric vs. fuel engines) have a large effect on your lo…

If Apple knew it could make more money in say for example, arms dealing, wouldn't it be obliged to pivot to serve the shareholders? I guess it's somewhat democratic as shareholders could vote against it for moral reasons

It’s never just about “more money”. It’s about time-discounted, risk-adjusted “more money”. Doing morally repugnant things increases risk substantially. This is not the risk profile the owners signed up for.

This change may even depress the stock price directly as disgusted owners sell (this harms the ability of current shareholders to earn a return, as the loss is now but the future revenues are discounted).

The market is as moral as its shareholders, which is far less than perfection but a lot better than zero.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#253

Post by conradev »

conradev wrote: post #246
yholio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has no love for privacy nor ever had. They are in a market position where their main competitors - Google primarily, Microsoft and Amazon - are highly dependent on revenue streams extracted by monetizing personal information. Apple is in a position to cut that stream without affecting its bottom line, so it does it and claims privacy as a core value. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have no doubt t…

When Apple launched iOS 6, it was the first operating system to include per-app privacy controls around access to things like microphone, camera, photos, etc. Controls we consider fundamental today. It did not mention it a single time in any of its PR or marketing at all. The first reference you find to it will be from Apple blogs who were surprised to stumble upon it in the iOS 6 beta. It took Android two more years…

If you’re curious about more of the history (now, almost a decade ago), this was the scandal that likely motivated the above:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-...

Congresspeople sent letters to app developers as a result (not even Apple, ha). iOS 6 was then seeded to the public four months after that article.

But! It actually goes earlier than this. Apple started phasing out access to device identifiers used to track users across apps in iOS 5: https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/apple-ios-5-phasing-out-ud...

(again, none of this was marketed to anyone)

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#254

Post by fennecfoxen »

catmanjan wrote: post #232
aardshark wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are made up of and run by people and the decisions made by those people are not necessarily solely profit-driven. That doesn't mean that making money is not important to these people; of course it is. But it's not the only factor.

Corporations are owned by shareholders, aren't they the ones who ultimately make decisions?

Only nominally. In practice you will have a board and executives and managers who are subject to the conflicts of interest inherent to the principal-agent relationship. This is a major problem of economics.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#255

Post by tonyb »

conradev wrote: post #246
yholio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has no love for privacy nor ever had. They are in a market position where their main competitors - Google primarily, Microsoft and Amazon - are highly dependent on revenue streams extracted by monetizing personal information. Apple is in a position to cut that stream without affecting its bottom line, so it does it and claims privacy as a core value. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have no doubt t…

When Apple launched iOS 6, it was the first operating system to include per-app privacy controls around access to things like microphone, camera, photos, etc. Controls we consider fundamental today. It did not mention it a single time in any of its PR or marketing at all. The first reference you find to it will be from Apple blogs who were surprised to stumble upon it in the iOS 6 beta. It took Android two more years…

The first except for Blackberry. Before IOS or Android even existed Blackberry had granular per app permissions.

I don't disagree with your argument though, of the modern mobile OSs Apple moved to towards the per-app model before everyone else. I just find it interesting when Apple or Android gets coverage/credit for a feature that has long existed but was forgotten or ignored.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#256

Post by my123 »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #237
my123 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the M1, that's by design. If you install macOS on an external volume it doesn't have that behaviour. On the internal disk, it's there because they carried over the iOS infrastructure, where your login password is the FDE one. macOS also now boots before asking for your password, like iOS. (the OS volume itself isn't encrypted and is read-only, the data volume is encrypted with your password)

> (the OS volume itself isn't encrypted and is read-only, the data volume is encrypted with your password) Wait, WHAT? Can someone with an M1 encrypted volume Mac check this directory and see if you see thumbnails? > $TMPDIR/../C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/ A full writeup of this is at the link [1]. This has been a well-known thing in computer forensics for many years, which is why *full* disk encryption is s…

Everything in the Data volume is encrypted. The System volume is signed by Apple and is the same on every Big Sur Mac (SSV feature).

This can be disabled through csrutil though.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#257

Post by vaduz »

blub wrote: post #241
vaduz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that their competitors are as bad or worse in this regard does not make Apple saints - and this has all the hallmarks of an intentional addition to position Apple apps differently from the others, which is a classic Apple move. Compromise in security and prviacy clearly has been deemed worth by someone at Apple before the stink was raised.

This kind of black and white thinking is very impractical and self-defeating, except maybe for RMS, to remind us what we should strive for. For most of us, the real world decision is to either work with a company which is actively working on undermining privacy or with one which is trying to improve things.

Did I say I would stop working with them?

In the real world, Apple still gets to have their business and people work with them, but enough stink is raised to both externally and privately to get them to change their decision. Which they have evidently done here, so working as intended. Reputation damage is a thing if it involves conversations with other F100 companies.

This particular debacle is one of the reasons why $CurrentCorpo I am occasionally working with decided to skip Big Sur until much later in the lifecycle - not the only one, though.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#258

Post by acdha »

user3939382 wrote: post #51
p1mrx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The screenshot shows init-p01st.push.apple.com and ##-courier.push.apple.com, none of which have IPv6 AAAA records that I can see.

If you proxy macOS connections overnight with no apps running and the computer idle you get about 15 hosts from 7-8 Apple processes phoning home, a handful of them resort last to IPv6 after ignoring your DNS and /etc/hosts The screenshot is an example of traffic to Apple unsolicited by the user.

> The screenshot is an example of traffic to Apple unsolicited by the user.

Do you expect a dialog box every time it resolves a hostname? Users want features like Messages which depend on the push notifications service shown, not the details of how it’s implemented.

This is also Exhibit A for where the idea for things like firewall allow lists come from: there are always people who will block something they don’t recognize and then complain about “bugs” after the system does exactly what they requested.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#259

Post by finnthehuman »

catmanjan wrote: post #230
heinrichhartman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By choosing which markets you operate in and which products you develop you have a fair bit of influence which things are in your "financial interest". E.g. creating a company with a business model which benefits from taxing CO2 emissions (Tesla) is morally great. Whereas having a business model which benefits from cheap oil (VW) is less so. Product decisions (electric vs. fuel engines) have a large effect on your lo…

If Apple knew it could make more money in say for example, arms dealing, wouldn't it be obliged to pivot to serve the shareholders? I guess it's somewhat democratic as shareholders could vote against it for moral reasons

No.

The case in question is Dodge vs. Ford and rather than believe memes about it just read the darn wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Re: Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2

#260

Post by Unklejoe »

jiofih wrote: post #248
Paraesthetic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be responsible of them if they had done it in a situation where they weren't pressured into the decision by media outlets.

The amount of people reading about firewalls in the latest OS release surely does not qualify as “media pressure” on any kind of scale.

Don't underestimate the power that a few angry nerds can have when it comes to the overall narrative about a technology.

Every family has that one computer geek who everyone asks for advice, which ultimately influences purchase decisions.

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