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You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

eclecticlight.co

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Re: You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

#3
I was considering buying a mini Mac, but there wasn't a way to encrypt it fully with Veracrypt and in the case of Francis Rawls the feds got pass Apples vault encryption. With the recent iPhone notification storage revelation I don't trust Apple at all.

Re: You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

#5
post #3

I was considering buying a mini Mac, but there wasn't a way to encrypt it fully with Veracrypt and in the case of Francis Rawls the feds got pass Apples vault encryption. With the recent iPhone notification storage revelation I don't trust Apple at all.

Notification storage? What’s the story there?

Nevermind just saw this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490

Re: You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

#7
The problem with Mac’s sandbox system is that it’s giving me some PTSD of Windows UAC. It’s inventing a solution to a problem that might exist in small doses, but instead gives users permission fatigue.

I personally think the traditional *nix model has served us quite well, and elective sandboxing using containers (à la Docker and so on) is quite good. The Mac sandbox model is probably ok for most normal users, but for power users is infuriating at times. Multiple restarts of Mac and various processes (and when you realize not enough scopes have been granted, another subsequent restart). I think Mac forcing all users into its sandbox system has been one of my least favorite impacts since upgrading macOS, leading to the enshittification of macOS.

The craziest thing is background processes started by Terminal/iTerm (such as tmux) can inherit Terminal or iTerm’s elevated status even when Terminal or iTerm are no longer running, dead, or killed. So you’ll have a bunch of elevated processes without the elevated parent or grandparent process running—it makes me feel the whole permissions scheme is more performative than actually useful.

Re: You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

#9
post #3

I was considering buying a mini Mac, but there wasn't a way to encrypt it fully with Veracrypt and in the case of Francis Rawls the feds got pass Apples vault encryption. With the recent iPhone notification storage revelation I don't trust Apple at all.

I couldn’t find any reference to File Vault being cracked in the Rawls case. Source?

Edit: I saw they accessed his Mac but they had his password. File Vault 2 wasn’t bypassed, and afaik has never been cracked.

Re: You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

#10

It seems that author basically found a 0day and published it. It's for sure better than selling it on the dark web but maybe it's better first tell it to Apple?

Not really, just an unintuitive security feature. You still need the user's permission to access that folder, but that permission is then persistent. I consider it a UX bug for sure but not an exploit.
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