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You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings

eclecticlight.co

31–40 of 175 posts

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

#31
post #20

I think I’m probably being dumb, but the gotcha here seems to be - ‘if I give an application permission to access a folder, it has access to the files in that folder’ - which is what I would expect??

The gotcha is “I gave it permission, then revoked permission in the UI, but it still has permission.”

Not quite. The steps are revoking permission in the UI (which works as expected), then implicitly granting permission in a way that the UI does not reflect but quietly persists.

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

#32
post #25
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you need to read more carefully. In particular: “8. Confirm that Documents access for Insent is still disabled in Files & Folders. “9. Whatever you do now, the app retains full access to Documents, no matter what is shown or set in Files & Folders.” […] “Access restrictions shown in Privacy & Security settings, specifically those to protected locations in Files & Folders, aren’t an accurate or trustworthy reflec…

"6. Click on Open from folder and select your Documents folder there. Confirm that works as expected and displays the name and contents of one of the text files in Documents." It's because in step 6 the user explicitly selected the Documents folder. The app can access the Documents folder because the user chose that directory in the native file browse dialog during the same run of the app. IMO that's a reasonable tra…

The problem is that this given permission doesn’t show in Files & Folders, and after turning it on and off there it still persists. The only way to revoke it is using some CLI command and restart the computer.

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

#33
post #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 f…

I feel like I can mostly use containers on macOS. Is there a different sense that people are using containers on *nix? Or are you referring to all the macOS specific software footguns? I would like to be able to run arbitrary code with gradual/granular privilege escalation. (e.g iOS/android with more affordances and escape hatches. macOS is getting there, but it's been a pretty bumpy/potholed road). Right now if I do…

I was building a lightweight imitation of OpenClaw. Just a Claude.md and iMessage watcher. I had to play around with Privacy a lot to be able to read my iMessages database, and do a lot of iTerm restarting.

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

#34
post #25
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you need to read more carefully. In particular: “8. Confirm that Documents access for Insent is still disabled in Files & Folders. “9. Whatever you do now, the app retains full access to Documents, no matter what is shown or set in Files & Folders.” […] “Access restrictions shown in Privacy & Security settings, specifically those to protected locations in Files & Folders, aren’t an accurate or trustworthy reflec…

"6. Click on Open from folder and select your Documents folder there. Confirm that works as expected and displays the name and contents of one of the text files in Documents." It's because in step 6 the user explicitly selected the Documents folder. The app can access the Documents folder because the user chose that directory in the native file browse dialog during the same run of the app. IMO that's a reasonable tra…

> during the same run of the app

Is this part true? The article's fix involves running a command and rebooting the computer. If restarting the app was sufficient, surely you wouldn't need the command/reboot?

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

#35
post #32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"6. Click on Open from folder and select your Documents folder there. Confirm that works as expected and displays the name and contents of one of the text files in Documents." It's because in step 6 the user explicitly selected the Documents folder. The app can access the Documents folder because the user chose that directory in the native file browse dialog during the same run of the app. IMO that's a reasonable tra…

The problem is that this given permission doesn’t show in Files & Folders, and after turning it on and off there it still persists. The only way to revoke it is using some CLI command and restart the computer.

That's not what's happening here. Forget about the first 5 steps. If you install the app and start from step 6, the behaviour will be the same. If the user chooses the Documents folder in the browse window in an app, the app can use the contents of the Documents folder without the need for that permission in the Settings page.

The Privacy settings applies only to access to the Documents folder without the user interaction.

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

#37
The first thing I wondered after reading this article is whether there might be a scheduled task to run the permission reset similarly to how the author ran it via the command line.

It seems most likely that this is some kind of bug where that command or its underlying actions should be called every time the user unchecks something in the settings panel.

This is what we get when the iPhone’s permission system is grafted on top of a desktop OS that was never designed for it. I think they could have done something that is more Unix-like and yet friendly to the GUI end user.

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

#38
post #17

I think I’m probably being dumb, but the gotcha here seems to be - ‘if I give an application permission to access a folder, it has access to the files in that folder’ - which is what I would expect??

Yes, you need to read more carefully. In particular: “8. Confirm that Documents access for Insent is still disabled in Files & Folders. “9. Whatever you do now, the app retains full access to Documents, no matter what is shown or set in Files & Folders.” […] “Access restrictions shown in Privacy & Security settings, specifically those to protected locations in Files & Folders, aren’t an accurate or trustworthy reflec…

This is so typical for Apple software "quality". While a truly love some of the features Apple has put into my pocket, I am noticing since years that at least iOS is the first commercially sold platform where I sometimes have to press a boolean toggle twice to have it take effect. They seem to have a lot of bugs around UI synchronisation.

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

#39
post #37

The first thing I wondered after reading this article is whether there might be a scheduled task to run the permission reset similarly to how the author ran it via the command line. It seems most likely that this is some kind of bug where that command or its underlying actions should be called every time the user unchecks something in the settings panel. This is what we get when the iPhone’s permission system is graf…

This reminds me of the early days of MacOS where "repair permissions" was the magic fix to everything, or so it was rumored.

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

#40
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"6. Click on Open from folder and select your Documents folder there. Confirm that works as expected and displays the name and contents of one of the text files in Documents." It's because in step 6 the user explicitly selected the Documents folder. The app can access the Documents folder because the user chose that directory in the native file browse dialog during the same run of the app. IMO that's a reasonable tra…

> during the same run of the app Is this part true? The article's fix involves running a command and rebooting the computer. If restarting the app was sufficient, surely you wouldn't need the command/reboot?

I guess not. Looks like if you choose the Documents directory once, you give your implicit permission to the app until you choose another restricted directory.
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