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Apple Exclaves

randomaugustine.medium.com

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Re: Apple Exclaves

#211

Post by runjake »

lambdaone wrote: post #170
runjake wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not over engineering. It’s because of research like this, along with other researchers like Charlie Miller. Apple generally isn’t out to make things willfully overcomplicated without good reason. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260379

All of which is fantastic, until you can't trust Apple because they are under a secret obligation to disable that feature. Non-programmable hardware gating the I/O lines or power isn't hackable in the same way.

From the thread I linked:

> On Macbooks made after 2014, no firmware is involved

Re: Apple Exclaves

#212

Post by lxgr »

saagarjha wrote: post #201
lxgr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part? Apple is already using the secure enclave for key derivation, PIN/password rate limiting etc. (that’s what it’s for), but my point is that there’s currently a gap in that you can often not really know if you are actually talking to the secure enclave or OS-level malware.

Secure PIN entry

How? The secure enclave doesn't have any trusted input/output capabilities other than the power button double click and biometrics. The PIN isn't entered via these.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#213

Post by lukifer »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #165
lukifer wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better analogy might be, "when the morality police call the restaurant, they divulge which table you sit at every day during lunch". And it's also not clear that it would be noticed: national security letters, gag orders, parallel construction, etc. It's just another principal-agent problem, and I agree that a fully self-sovereign life, with no dependence on trust or agents, is an unrealizable ideal; and, that a…

> a fully self-sovereign life, with no dependence on trust or agents, is an unrealizable ideal I agree with this part, but relying Apple is quite far from self-sovereignty compared to many other practical alternatives: not relying on external clouds, GrapheneOS, Linux. By relying on Apple, you not only pay a tax to essentially bribe them to not attack you (perhaps a viable strategy, not too different from taxes to go…

Fair points, I can't say I disagree, and I'm aware of the trade-offs I'm making. (I was actually tempted to use the word "bribe" when describing the Apple Tax!)

There are a couple meaningful points of divergence in the ecosystem: Mac vs iOS (the former has some self-sovereignty, even if there are risks of backdoors/etc); and, cloud vs not (I mostly avoid cloud usage, iCloud or otherwise, and when I do use it, I treat all content as public).

I agree about the trust problem. Varoufakis might make some valid points re: "Technofeudalism", but then Bruce Schneier was making a similar analogy over a decade ago. I've heard cogent arguments, that early feudalism evolved from rational self-interest, that serfs were willing to trade some degree of autonomy for safety, and it does feel that many "normie" users (especially with iOS) are making a similar rational trade, even if it sets up an asymmetric power dynamic, and risk (inevitability?) of future betrayal.

I'm curious if you have any examples in mind for Apple, re: "do not suffer consequences when they break that trust". IMO, they've done okay at putting actions and costly signaling behind their privacy rhetoric, and I think they'd take some kind of market hit if they were to blatantly break that trust. But I'm curious if you think there are past instances in which that already happened, which maybe I've forgotten or am neglecting, or if it's a threat model of the future.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#214

Post by hedora »

lxgr wrote: post #212
saagarjha wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secure PIN entry

How? The secure enclave doesn't have any trusted input/output capabilities other than the power button double click and biometrics. The PIN isn't entered via these.

Also, can't you just get the pin from the accelerometer? (It may take a few tries, but this was shown by academics a while back.)

Re: Apple Exclaves

#215

Post by alwayslikethis »

lukifer wrote: post #213
alwayslikethis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a fully self-sovereign life, with no dependence on trust or agents, is an unrealizable ideal I agree with this part, but relying Apple is quite far from self-sovereignty compared to many other practical alternatives: not relying on external clouds, GrapheneOS, Linux. By relying on Apple, you not only pay a tax to essentially bribe them to not attack you (perhaps a viable strategy, not too different from taxes to go…

Fair points, I can't say I disagree, and I'm aware of the trade-offs I'm making. (I was actually tempted to use the word "bribe" when describing the Apple Tax!) There are a couple meaningful points of divergence in the ecosystem: Mac vs iOS (the former has some self-sovereignty, even if there are risks of backdoors/etc); and, cloud vs not (I mostly avoid cloud usage, iCloud or otherwise, and when I do use it, I treat…

> any examples in mind for Apple

Their image scanning proposal? The recent UK E2EE backup thing?

For the first, although they eventually backtracked, proposing it alone should be ruinous they are actually a privacy-oriented company.

Although the second situation is forced by a government, it is still a self-inflicted problem where iCloud is the only way you can back up your stuff. Not being able to have encrypted backups is a serious QoL issue.

> I mostly avoid cloud usage, iCloud or otherwise, and when I do use it, I treat all content as public

This is also my attitude toward "the cloud" in general.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#216

Post by t0astbread »

rollcat wrote: post #203
t0astbread wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to be that person but: As someone who's been using NixOS as their daily driver for about three years (after switching to it from Debian) and is currently trying out a MacBook I can tell you that NixOS provides a very different experience than everything else you've mentioned (including macOS). The only other OS I'm aware of that it's comparable to is Guix System which is distantly related to NixOS. NixOS in its…

I've been using NixOS for a couple of years; I still have it on one of my RasPis. I've had a moderately elaborate config for my laptop. I could enumerate all of the problems I've had with it, but back to my point: not that different from every other distribution. Once you get past the insane level of ecosystem fragmentation and DIY fixes (which NixOS adds to- with "regular" configs vs flakes), there's still the UX de…

Of course, the software that goes onto a NixOS installation is the same as on most other Linux distros so it's not any different in that regard. What I was trying to say is the config management aspect - especially when used with an ephemeral root FS - provides an entirely different way of managing your computer that's not really possible to replicate anywhere else (except Guix as I've mentioned).

Not that that makes it objectively better or worse. The config shtick of NixOS can also be really annoying to someone who just wants to install stuff and move on. It comes down to personal preference.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#217

Post by rollcat »

t0astbread wrote: post #216
rollcat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using NixOS for a couple of years; I still have it on one of my RasPis. I've had a moderately elaborate config for my laptop. I could enumerate all of the problems I've had with it, but back to my point: not that different from every other distribution. Once you get past the insane level of ecosystem fragmentation and DIY fixes (which NixOS adds to- with "regular" configs vs flakes), there's still the UX de…

Of course, the software that goes onto a NixOS installation is the same as on most other Linux distros so it's not any different in that regard. What I was trying to say is the config management aspect - especially when used with an ephemeral root FS - provides an entirely different way of managing your computer that's not really possible to replicate anywhere else (except Guix as I've mentioned). Not that that makes…

Personally I prefer the approach that the BSDs took: your OS has a "base" that is designed and integrated as a whole, provides basic services (SSH, httpd, mail, etc) plus a spartan GUI and all the tools to support its own development. Everything else is in ports/packages, which theoretically can be erased all at once with no loss in core functionality. It's conceptually simple and works OK in practice.

Notably, macOS (a BSD in my book) took the next logical step and completely sealed the base OS, all the way via logical volume management, verified boot chain, SEP (aka TPM), etc.

I agree that NixOS solves configuration management in a much more elegant way, but that elegance carries a heavy cost: it requires domain knowledge to comprehend. Personally I just keep /etc in git, and use judo to propagate changes. https://github.com/rollcat/judo>

Re: Apple Exclaves

#218

Post by eleveriven »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #104
eleveriven wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim definitely carries that torch in his own way, but there was something about Steve's presence that made everything feel more… human? Less corporate? Hard to put into words, but yeah, I miss him too. Thanks for sharing that video.

One of the things about Tim Cook, that people don’t really talk about (which, IMO, is appropriate), is that he’s openly gay. Most times, this doesn’t mean anything, but there’s very few demographics that understand the need for privacy and data protection, better than gay folks. Of course, he’s still at the whim of the Board, and he’s no spring chicken, so there’s no guarantee that his successor would feel the same,…

I do think Tim Cook takes it seriously, though as you said, there's always the question of what happens when leadership changes

Re: Apple Exclaves

#219

Post by spyke112 »

rollcat wrote: post #204
spyke112 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fedora is really good though. I’ve daily driven Windows, MacOS and Linux, Fedora is by far the best developer experience I’ve had so far. But then again, I tend to setup my devbox quite spartan, so that it just works.

Does Fedora support ZFS (without building from source) yet? Filesystem snapshots is not something I'd ever give up on, and Btrfs still doesn't seem production-ready. Also - I'm done distro-hopping. The problem is KDE/Gnome- KDE is aping Windows (badly), Gnome is aping macOS (also badly). I'd list all of the problems but it would take an essay.

I don’t know, it’s my workstation so everything is in Dropbox/Onedrive/Github/Gitlab, making the machine itself ephemeral… Come to think of it I should probably get a NAS and mirror Dropbox/Onedrive onto, just in case.

Re: Apple Exclaves

#220

Post by rollcat »

spyke112 wrote: post #219
rollcat wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Fedora support ZFS (without building from source) yet? Filesystem snapshots is not something I'd ever give up on, and Btrfs still doesn't seem production-ready. Also - I'm done distro-hopping. The problem is KDE/Gnome- KDE is aping Windows (badly), Gnome is aping macOS (also badly). I'd list all of the problems but it would take an essay.

I don’t know, it’s my workstation so everything is in Dropbox/Onedrive/Github/Gitlab, making the machine itself ephemeral… Come to think of it I should probably get a NAS and mirror Dropbox/Onedrive onto, just in case.

Does Dropbox or Onedrive keep hourly+daily+weekly+monthly deduplicated snapshots of everything that's happened on your machine, that work without any network connection?

It's no substitute for backups (I use Borg), and syncing is good (I use Syncthing, I guess iCloud also counts). But snapshots should be ubiquitous at this point, just like having a "trash bin" was mainstream in 1995.

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