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Can't you just right click?

lapcatsoftware.com

131–140 of 765 posts

Re: Can't you just right click?

#131

I'm not sure what the point of that page or posting it here is. This system (and others like it) is neither new nor special. It's also not a bad thing, and I haven't seen anyone come up with a better alternative. Generally you see all major distribution options have signatures with a CA-type trust structure no matter what you use, be it open-source, free or commercial paid software. On Windows, macOS and at least all…

Question for you: what exactly does Notarization protect against? I have watched all the videos about it, I read the developer documentation, I notarize my apps because it is required by the OS…but I still have not gotten a single good explanation as to why it's useful. Apple claims that the process is extremely tolerant…so does it try to accept everything but blatant malware? Does it let malware through? What happen…

> Apple claims that the process is extremely tolerant…so does it try to accept everything but blatant malware?

From what I understand, the most common use case here is to match against known malware inserted into an otherwise normal release, either from an infected dev machine or by way of an attacker coopting stolen credentials. It's not going to guard against truly novel malware for obvious reasons, but the vast majority of malware is a repackaging of stuff that's already out there.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#132
post #123

I dont see any problem with this. If you don't feel comfortable doing this then you definitely shouldn't be running random code from the internet. I would take it a step further and force it to be run from the command line. Also, what kind of "viable software business" has trouble paying $100 a year?

> Also, what kind of "viable software business" has trouble paying $100 a year? The issue isn't the money. The blog post was written in the context of the widely reported story of Apple threatening to terminate the developer account of Epic Games, which would prevent them from signing and notarizing their Mac software.

Ahh, that makes a bit more sense. If only had they the same policy on the iphone it wouldnt be as big of an issue.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#133
post #64
post #7

I still believe that Gatekeeper is a blatant cash grab and not a legitimate security feature. $100/year to avoid a scary warning about how your app is definitely a virus? It's like a protection racket.

It's hard to believe that this would be a cash grab. Even if there are 1M developers in the world, that's only $100M, which should not be worth the friction and cost to implement and maintain this scheme. Consider that Apple's most recent quarterly revenue was just under $60B. Apple made $260B in all of 2019; $100M is not even four hundredths of a percent. Developer time to build out the signing and notarization feat…

> As much as we all like to call out Apple sometimes for how they don't take good care of their developers, adding hoops for your developers to jump through is not a great idea.

Why not?

Apple has been pushing very hard lately to increase their 'services' revenue, by getting users to sign up for Apple Music, iCloud, etc. It makes perfect sense for Apple to force developers to jump through hoops, not because it makes the developers' lives worse, but because it gives Apple a leg up! Some examples:

• When launching Chrome for the first time, you have to opt-in to Chrome notifications, but macOS pops up its own notification telling you to use Safari instead.

• Similarly, Apple News notifications are allowed by default, but you have to explicitly opt-in to notifications from other news websites.

• Again, similarly, you'll get Apple Music adverts through push notifications, something that's explicitly disallowed in the App Store guidelines.

• System Preferences gets an obnoxious (1) badge next to it, because I haven't signed in to iCloud.

I use SyncThing, rather than iCloud Drive. It definitely benefits Apple to waste the SyncThing developers' time and money keeping up with things the iCloud Drive team doesn't need to deal with — do you really think the sort of company that pulls shit like the above would do anything different?

Re: Can't you just right click?

#134
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> learned that the warning is just something they need to bypass Note that I'm not necessarily arguing that training people to click "yes, yes, continue..." is a good idea. Digital security is my day job and I totally see why Apple wants digital signatures for software. However, the message is opaque about what is really going on and just tries to scare people into buying "trusted" software rather than using free sof…

Not only is the message opaque, but it is intentionally misleading. I know the security team at Apple occasionally has trouble coming up with good explanations of what is going on, but this message really can't be looked at in any way other than being misleading, sorry. And you are absolutely right that misleading messages like these train users to click through warnings.

How is it "intentionally misleading"?

Re: Can't you just right click?

#135
software security 101: if there is an "accept the obvious risk" button, the user WILL DEFINITELY CLICK IT. No matter how clear you make the danger, they always choose potential malware instead of inconvenience. It's better hide because, otherwise that button would be the center of any social engineering attack

Re: Can't you just right click?

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, this just means all binaries need codesign --sign - run on them before they will run. You don't need to pay to do this, so it's a minor annoyance rather than Apple centralizing control of app distribution.

Why wouldn't a malware author just... do that?

I believe one of the main security benefits of these requirements are ensuring a binary hasn't been altered maliciously, or otherwise I guess. Not preventing outright malicious applications.

Also so the os doesn't have to repeatedly rescan apps, etc.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not listening: you don't make software on iOS.

I have a feeling that this is going to change in the next year or two.

It could. But still, someone has to develop iOS itself. And someone has to write the server back-ends that all those apps depend on. And the cloud infrastructure that those back-ends run within.

By definition there will always be something out there that can't be developed on a locked-down platform. So there will always be an open platform, even if Apple decided one day (again, unlikely I think) to recuse themselves from that market.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, this just means all binaries need codesign --sign - run on them before they will run. You don't need to pay to do this, so it's a minor annoyance rather than Apple centralizing control of app distribution.

Why wouldn't a malware author just... do that?

If you have a vulnerable app, it might modify another already approved app that is already installed, thus omitting the scary message about untrusted code before being run.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#139
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, this just means all binaries need codesign --sign - run on them before they will run. You don't need to pay to do this, so it's a minor annoyance rather than Apple centralizing control of app distribution.

Does it tie them to your Apple ID, or is it a key you can keep totally private from Apple?

It's not tied to a key at all, it's basically just a hash (read: the checksum kind) with no authenticity guarantees as to who signed the binary.

Re: Can't you just right click?

#140
post #7

I still believe that Gatekeeper is a blatant cash grab and not a legitimate security feature. $100/year to avoid a scary warning about how your app is definitely a virus? It's like a protection racket.

I think this is part of a longer term and much larger cash grab of eventually forcing all Mac software to go through the app store. Apple will of course require a modest 30% cut of all sales for providing their benevolent oversight.
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