Live data from Hacker News

Apple Exclaves

randomaugustine.medium.com

91–100 of 233 posts

Re: Apple Exclaves

#91

I wonder if it's possible for app devs to use Exclaves. The thing that irks me about Apple is that they invent this new amazing internal stuff but then completely wall it off from devs, leaving everyone else (banking apps, wallets, secure messaging, etc.) to continue running in unsecured user space.

Currently no.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very few people who would't use their wealth to try to save their lifes, or that of their loved ones. It's kind of what wealth is for.

You know that's still bad right?

Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax?

Re: Apple Exclaves

#93
post #39
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Isn’t this just the xkcd authorization model? https://xkcd.com/1200/ I tried to read the article, and know what all the words mean (sel4, enclaves, virtualization primitives, etc.). It all seems very complicated and error prone, but I couldn’t figure out what the attack model is, or what the security objectives are. Eg, what sorts of things run in exclaves, and under what circumstances will a persistent kerne…

Delegating key derivation and/or password validation, combined with secure UI state indication, to a more secure execution environment can be a big win for security, for example. I could imagine a passkey implementation with some extensions that allow securely presenting what the user is consenting to and how ("enter your payments PIN or password now to confirm a payment of $x to merchant y"). It's of course even bet…

This is apparently already a thing

Re: Apple Exclaves

#94

I wonder if it's possible for app devs to use Exclaves. The thing that irks me about Apple is that they invent this new amazing internal stuff but then completely wall it off from devs, leaving everyone else (banking apps, wallets, secure messaging, etc.) to continue running in unsecured user space.

My understanding is no with the current design - exclaves are built into the overall OS and started as part of the boot process, so they are relatively static. I suspect these components have static relationships for security reasons.

They are also kernel-to-kernel currently, so third party support would likely be limited to implementing things like secure device drivers. However, Apple has been trying to push third party drivers to user space, not to the hypervisor. Based on that migration happening in parallel with this development, I do not suspect they plan to pivot and have third party driver developers use exclaves.

It is pretty common for Apple to do significantly more stabilization of kernel-imposed platform features like this internally before exposing to third parties (see also pointer authentication a la arm64e).

Re: Apple Exclaves

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's definitely misunderstood. If you read his biography it's incredible how much the author of it misunderstands, but if you read between the lines you can see through them. In particular you should note how he changes before and after getting married. The biography is really awful though. It constantly misquotes people - Bill Gates is directly quoted as saying something so technically inaccurate he can't possibly h…

I don’t remember many details from the biography at this point, but I remember not liking it either. It seemed like it was written with the assumption the reader already knew the about Steve’s more public life and career, and skipped over much of it. It didn’t feel like it would be a good source for future generations to learn about Steve, as it seemed to largely ignore the entire reason a book was being written abou…

> I also remembering it seeming largely negative

It definitely was, but at least parts of that must have been warranted given Jobs refused to read it, saying something along the lines of "I know I wouldn’t like what it says"

Re: Apple Exclaves

#96
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I'm becoming an old man, I've taken the time to go back and listen to him properly, to analize his thoughts and words a bit more contextually, and I've come to believe that Steve Jobs was quite misunderstood, both by us, and by himself. When I miss him I think: his thoughts were so very refined for his time, it is quite incredible and I wish he was around to hear more of them. I guess I'm a fan? Oh well...wo…

I still think about how he tried to cure cancer with crystals and then when that didn’t work he used his wealth to get residency in a different state to jump in line for a transplant and still died before his yacht got completed. I don’t misunderstand him at all. Especially the parking in handicap spaces part. Very easy to understand what kind of person he was through his actions. Perhaps we will never see eye to eye…

Pancreatic cancer is known for being incurable, even in the best of circumstances, early diagnose or not. Having witnessed a family member go through the same thing, I understand Jobs's reaction of trying literally anything else.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that's still bad right?

Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax?

> Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax?

You didn’t pose the question to me. And yet.

Very many people don’t. We know there are constructs that would enable us to pay less, yet we choose to not pursue them. We are part of a society that enables us to be what we are, why should we strive to give as little as possible in return?

(And yes, we also don’t send extra money. This is not a contradiction.)

Re: Apple Exclaves

#98
post #80
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we lose a bastion of being able to speak quite freely in front of other intelligent humans, that will be a shame.

I never said I disapprove.

that's how it looked

Re: Apple Exclaves

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that's still bad right?

Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax?

because we all live paycheck to paycheck, to fund wars and Tesla carbon rebates.

While he could have funded a new hospital and not even change his tax bracket.

Post reply on HN