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Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

blog.jacopo.io

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Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#11

Post by the_duke »

While other posts on this topic are too alarmist, this one is way too Apple apologetic for my taste.

* There is no information on how often the validation happens. All this investigation concludes is that it doesn't happen when closing and immediately re-opening an app. Is it every week? Every reboot? Every hour? If it's less, that's essentially the same as doing it on every launch.

* There is no justification for sending this information in cleartext. I don't follow the "browsers and loops" argument. This is a system-service that only has to trust a special Apple certificate, which can be distributed via other side-channels.

* Many developers only publish a single app or a certain type of app. So it still is a significant information leak. It's really not much different from sending a app-specific hash. Think: remote therapy/healthcare apps, pornographic games, or Tor - which alone could get you into big trouble or on a watchlist in certain regions.

I assume they will push a fix with better timeouts and availability detection.

But Apple simply has to find a more privacy-aware system designs for this problem which does not leak this kind of data without an opt-in and also does not impact application startup times. (revocation lists?)

I imagine this data might just be too attractive not to have. Such a "lazy" design is hard to imagine coming out of Apple otherwise.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#12

Post by dmitriid »

> Maybe the hash is computed only once (e.g. the first time you run the app) and it is stored somewhere.

This would explain why some games take minutes to launch the first time to run them. I've experienced this many times with Steam. You install a game, you launch it, and nothing happens for up to several minutes, and then the game runs. No delays after in launching after that.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#13

Post by Deathmax »

chpmrc wrote: post #3
intricatedetail wrote: post #2

Apple should change their name to "Peeping Tim".

Did you even read the article? It clearly shows that all that's being sent to Apple is some opaque info about the dev certificate used for the app(s).

Which is still sufficient information to narrow down to the set of applications developed by a single entity. And because this is being done over HTTP, anyone along the network chain has visibility as well.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#14

Post by api »

josephcsible wrote: post #10
ravenstine wrote: post #5

> macOS does actually send out some opaque information about the developer certificate of those apps, and that’s quite an important difference on a privacy perspective. Yes, and no. If you're using software that the state deems to be subversive or "dangerous", a developer certificate would make the nature of the software you are running pretty clear. They don't have to know exactly which program you're running, but j…

> I never asked them to do that in the first place, so I'll be blocking it from now on. Apple's working on making sure you can't block it. They already keep you from blocking their own traffic with Little Snitch and similar tools: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816

The hosts file works for now. Use 127.0.0.1 and ::1 on two separate lines. Used tcpdump to verify.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#16

Post by ravenstine »

josephcsible wrote: post #10
ravenstine wrote: post #5

> macOS does actually send out some opaque information about the developer certificate of those apps, and that’s quite an important difference on a privacy perspective. Yes, and no. If you're using software that the state deems to be subversive or "dangerous", a developer certificate would make the nature of the software you are running pretty clear. They don't have to know exactly which program you're running, but j…

> I never asked them to do that in the first place, so I'll be blocking it from now on. Apple's working on making sure you can't block it. They already keep you from blocking their own traffic with Little Snitch and similar tools: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816

Isn't that just with Big Sur? Also, I'm using the hosts file method.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#17

Post by cute_boi »

Clearly this article doesn't reveal every truth. Certificates authority should have been decentralized but is it happening?

And just by looking ip address, and app usage and other data they receive they can connect the data and identify its me. And what security has apple provided till now?

"You shouldn’t probably block ocsp.apple.com with Little Snitch or in your hosts file."

That's far better than freezing computer which doesn't work, doesn't run any apps. If I don't need apple mercy and protection please don't force me.

Already installed Linux and its a start.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#19

Post by ThePhysicist »

Not sure whether the non-privacy related aspect about OCSP is less worrying. Officially Apple does this to protect innocent users from malware, but as we've seen it also allows them to remotely disable any developers' software. Not really something that I'd want on my machine.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#20

Post by jeffbee »

dmitriid wrote: post #12

> Maybe the hash is computed only once (e.g. the first time you run the app) and it is stored somewhere. This would explain why some games take minutes to launch the first time to run them. I've experienced this many times with Steam. You install a game, you launch it, and nothing happens for up to several minutes, and then the game runs. No delays after in launching after that.

This behavior drives me crazy. The only way to figure out what's going on is to open the Activity Monitor. On my 2015 iMac (top-of-the-line, at the time) initial launch of some large games has taken tens of minutes, and it happens whenever the game is updated, not just after it is initially installed.
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