Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

wts.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 261 posts

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#131

Post by Groxx »

whartung wrote: post #104
xp84 wrote: post #90

On the off-chance someone at Apple reads this, I'll repeat my perennial beg that Apple stops popping up 'Give me your (local admin) password right now' dialogs randomly throughout the day because the computer has a hankering to install updates or something. Anyone with basic skills can whip up a convincing replica of that popup on the Web, and the "bottom 80%" (at least) of users in technical savvy would not think to…

The thing I hate about these things is I have no idea why they’re asking this, and no idea what happens if I say No, even how to “manage” these settings should I wish to change it. The UX is different from the apps saying “Hey, open the preferences panel and give us XXX” and there you can see the app, the capability toggle, decide to turn it on, or even go back to turn it back off. These experiences have been why I’v…

Capabilities are what lets you open a file picker from an app that cannot read your files, giving you a seamless and secure interaction with no extra UI.

They are definitely not always awful.

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#132

Post by ryukafalz »

nmgycombinator wrote: post #122
josephg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These experiences have been why I’ve not a big fan of “capabilities” as a concept. The UX around them is awful, and almost has to be. I don't think the UX has to be awful. The problem is just that they're kinda half baked on macos, and bolted on, and not really a first class citizen. There's no reason you couldn't have: - A preferences dialog showing which long-lived capabilities you've granted to which application…

As someone who's looked into the internals of macOS for a bit now, this is all incredibly fascinating. However, I am curious: do you think capabilities could be implemented like this at a really low level? Part of me thinks we have the security models we do in POSIX is because they're simple enough to represent in C code. The capability systems you're mentioning sound cool, but they sound a lot more complex. And if t…

Capabilities themselves can certainly be implemented at a very low level; you might implement them as an array of capabilities associated with each process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-list_%28computer_security%29

As that page points out, POSIX file descriptors are effectively c-lists. A capability operating system would use similar mechanisms to control access to resources other than just open files.

The other things GP mentioned (logging, interdiction, UIs for visibility/control, etc) are layers that you would implement on top of the lowest-level capability system.

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#133

Post by JadeNB »

makeitdouble wrote: post #68
nmgycombinator wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of the "helper tool" popup, but I would definitely be skeptical of it. Even if it is Slack, Slack is just a messaging application. I don't know what legitimate need it would have for a helper tool. I would ask Slack support, though (and hopefully you can get a real answer and explanation).

> Slack is just a messaging application. I kinda like this angle. While Slack makes an effort to work basically everywhere with low effort, I wonder what would follow if it wasn't the case. For instance if for some stupid legal reason Slack was banned from macos, how many people would just switch to another OS ? I'd bet it would be a non trivial amount of users at this point.

> I kinda like this angle. While Slack makes an effort to work basically everywhere with low effort, I wonder what would follow if it wasn't the case.

This idea of respecting user preference is not the way, though. For example, back when Skype existed, you couldn't remove its icon from the macOS menu bar, because (1) Microsoft didn't believe you had the right to choose to remove that item, and (2) macOS believes an app developer should have more control over what goes in my menu bar than I do.

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#134

Post by xp84 »

mulmen wrote: post #102
xp84 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comment on the overall topic, but I have long made a practice of installing into $HOME/Applications instead[1], and it's rare for me to encounter software that cares. A few apps have added popups to explain to beginners "Hey, you're running me from the Downloads folder, uhh, want me to properly move myself to /Applications/?" but that's about it. The only apps I run from /Applications that aren't part of the OS ar…

Now imagine that home directory was on your iPhone and you could plug it in to any Mac anywhere you went!

Now, that’s heresy! :D

(Although you could get closer to that with an iPod back in the day! Lots of my fellow Apple Store employees kept a lot of apps and things on their iPods!)

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#135

Post by xp84 »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #126
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the threat model of clicking on a fake popup? Isn't it a no-op because it isn't actually coming from the system?

Just realized that it asked for your system password if you don't have Touch ID.

The ones I get on my work MacBook Pro (which has Touch ID, which I use many times a day to do 1Password) ask me for my account password. No idea why. Also they never explain why.

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#136

Post by nmgycombinator »

An important correction, so hopefully this bubbles to the top (this will be appearing on the post as well):

A previous version of this article mentioned below that this CVE was patched in macOS Sequoia 15.5 et al., but I was a bit mistaken in that. Despite being released today as well, it appears that macOS Ventura 13.7.6 and macOS Sonoma 14.7.6 are not patched against this vulnerability.

I wrote that sentence assuming that Apple would have included a patch in all of the releases. It was only later, when I checked the security release notes, that I saw I was not credited under the other two releases. I reached out to Apple to clarify if these releases were patched. As of writing, I have not heard back.

I chose to do my own testing and spun up a virtual machine. After some difficulties I got it updated to macOS Sonoma 14.7.6 and was able to compile and run my proof of concept. It still worked. I would assume the same is true for macOS Ventura 13.7.6. I'm not sure why Apple didn't include the patch in these two releases.

I will update the post when I have more information and/or context.

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#137

Post by egypturnash »

xp84 wrote: post #92
Etheryte wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately many (most?) application developers don't know this either, and many of them go so far as to explicitly require their apps to be installed in /Applications, they simply won't work otherwise.

No comment on the overall topic, but I have long made a practice of installing into $HOME/Applications instead[1], and it's rare for me to encounter software that cares. A few apps have added popups to explain to beginners "Hey, you're running me from the Downloads folder, uhh, want me to properly move myself to /Applications/?" but that's about it. The only apps I run from /Applications that aren't part of the OS ar…

All my Adobe apps are fine running from /Applications/gfx; I've never tried putting them into ~/Applications. They do also dump a bunch of stuff elsewhere.

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#138

Post by phendrenad2 »

xp84 wrote: post #90

On the off-chance someone at Apple reads this, I'll repeat my perennial beg that Apple stops popping up 'Give me your (local admin) password right now' dialogs randomly throughout the day because the computer has a hankering to install updates or something. Anyone with basic skills can whip up a convincing replica of that popup on the Web, and the "bottom 80%" (at least) of users in technical savvy would not think to…

Plot twist: That dialog never existed! You already fell for it!

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#139

Post by manwe150 »

nmgycombinator wrote: post #95
xp84 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comment on the overall topic, but I have long made a practice of installing into $HOME/Applications instead[1], and it's rare for me to encounter software that cares. A few apps have added popups to explain to beginners "Hey, you're running me from the Downloads folder, uhh, want me to properly move myself to /Applications/?" but that's about it. The only apps I run from /Applications that aren't part of the OS ar…

> The idea being that I could then migrate more easily by copying the whole home directory, and thus all my apps that didn't require "installation" would come over. Unrelated, but this is what I find so interesting and cool about the drag-and-drop to install method prevalent on macOS. People complain, but what I guess they don't realize is that all they're doing is moving a folder into their `Applications` folder and…

That’s fine, but also just means the “real” installer just runs on first launch instead in those cases, whether that is to ask for permissions or setup launch scripts or copy files to more places

But just think about how much fun phone apps could have been if you first installed an installer and than than that downloaded an app to install the side components before launching a configuration program for installing that specific software suite

Re: Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

#140

Post by hoherd »

mulmen wrote: post #102
xp84 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comment on the overall topic, but I have long made a practice of installing into $HOME/Applications instead[1], and it's rare for me to encounter software that cares. A few apps have added popups to explain to beginners "Hey, you're running me from the Downloads folder, uhh, want me to properly move myself to /Applications/?" but that's about it. The only apps I run from /Applications that aren't part of the OS ar…

Now imagine that home directory was on your iPhone and you could plug it in to any Mac anywhere you went!

Or on your iPod. https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/36380/home-direct...
Post reply on HN