Live data from Hacker News

macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

objective-see.com

61–70 of 125 posts

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's ridiculous that we can't even fully disable it in the latest macOS releases (the commands others posted below don't work in Big Sur to completely disable quarantine). Thankfully there is a simple workaround: https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/disable-quarantine/

Note, the single command does turn off Gatekeeper. File quarantine is separate and needs a separate command. That is as it should be IMO, they’re completely different things.

Right, but do you know if there is a command to actually turn off quarantine? I mean really turning it off, not just removing it from already existing files. To my knowledge, that doesn't exist.

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frustrates you about it? I rarely bump into Gatekeeper and I'm doing the normal dev things.

Sometimes I compile my program and when I move it to the Applications folder and trying to run MacOS says, you do not have permission to do it. May be it's not a gatekeeper, who knows. The keyword here is sometimes This is what I Love about current state of MacOS. To fix it nothing works until you delete it completely and only then if you lucky etc ... It just reminds me those old good days with Microsoft many years…

[deleted]

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#63
post #2

Gatekeeper is one of the most frustrating things I have to fight whenever I try using MacOS. It feels like DRM for my applications, which in turn makes everything feel clunkier, and less integrated. I would genuinely pay Apple extra for a version of MacOS that just trusts me and lets me install what I want without the some esoteric mechanism stopping me at every step of the way...

Then turn it off. Open the Terminal and run: sudo spctl --master-disable That's it, it will never bother you again, unless you turn it back on or reinstall the OS from scratch. If macOS is still too limiting, you can also turn off System Integrity Protection, at which point you can do just about whatever the heck you want. I personally kept both Gatekeeper and SIP turned off, back when I used modern macOS. But if the…

What would I need to get it down to a Mojave level of inconvenience?

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#64
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about macOS Catalina users? Any updates / fixes for them? Do you happen to know?

It appears this behavior was introduced in Catalina, so I’d assume a complimentary fix to 11.3 will be available for 10.x - no word on timing AFAIK.

Security Update bundles were released for Catalina and Mojave as well.

The list of security fixes for the Big Sur update 11.3 has three entries mentioning Gatekeeper: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212325

...whereas the list for Catalina has only one: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT212326

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're hugely misreading my intentions. I'm an engineer: I see something unexpected, I want to figure out what's happening. You and I are both using the same software and you're seeing problems that I didn't even know affected some people. I'm not saying "this works for me so I don't know what you're complaining about". I'm saying "huh, this works for me. I wonder what's different between our systems? Is this somethi…

Apologies for misreading you, I'm just frustrated and accepted the fact that it is by design. I been reading other comments and as someone (xrisk) pointed out that it is Homebrew Casks which it made sense since all of the gatekeeper alerts is coming from 'Cask-ed' apps. I could disable Gatekeeper but I rather not because MacOS is not my daily driver. I rather to keep Gatekeeper active to protect itself from moronic m…

That's OK. If I were in your boat, I'd probably be pretty frustrated.

Does the method of right-clicking on an app, then "Open", in Finder work to tell Gatekeeper to quit complaining?

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#68
post #2

Gatekeeper is one of the most frustrating things I have to fight whenever I try using MacOS. It feels like DRM for my applications, which in turn makes everything feel clunkier, and less integrated. I would genuinely pay Apple extra for a version of MacOS that just trusts me and lets me install what I want without the some esoteric mechanism stopping me at every step of the way...

Apple has been moving toward a capability-based security model for a while now, I think: it’s a bit annoying because their implementation also acts like DRM, but I think the mode itself is a better security model than standard POSIX file permissions and ACLs

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to turn this off only for applications? Or even just in the applications directory? I find it irrationally annoying that everything in the applications folder shows the ".app" extension.

If you use the dashboard app switcher (iirc the F3 or F4 key), it hides .app in that list, it has a search field and I believe it accepts drag-and-drops. That’s not exactly an answer to your question, but there’s a chance it’s an acceptable solution, so duly noted.

It's F4 on my MacBook Pro 2018 Catalina. :)

Re: macOS gatekeeper and file quarantine bypass

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frustrates you about it? I rarely bump into Gatekeeper and I'm doing the normal dev things.

I'm assuming you don't use the package manager like Homebrew or MacPorts? this is where the gatekeeper will annoy the hell out of me. Apps installed via Homebrew often will encounter Gatekeeper alerts. Half of them will give the option to open it and the other half, the gatekeeper --demands-- gently ask me to put it in the Trash without the option to open it.

This is because Homebrew Cask explicitly adds the quarantine attribute to things it downloads. Perhaps there is some easy way to disable it or patch out this functionality?
Post reply on HN