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Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?

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

#221

Post by nmgycombinator »

mike_hearn wrote: post #208
nmgycombinator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The local network popup thing is too overdone in my opinion. However, I do think it is a good choice (in some respects) for Apple to have the "this is a program downloaded from the Internet", even if it can be annoying. It might also be a push to get developers to publish on the App Store (where Apple can be more sure (hopefully) that the apps are safe). It's a double-edged sword in my opinion. I think it's good that…

"This is a program downloaded from the internet" isn't a push to the app store. It predates the Mac App Store, iirc. It's another quick security hack (as they often are in any OS). Many years ago someone noticed that apps can pick any icon they want. And, therefore, if you could convince a browser to download a file to ~/Downloads (not hard), the user might look inside and find what appears to be a harmless JPEG or W…

That's a fair point. But did Mac have the same issue as Windows where file extensions were not shown by default? That feels like it would have been the core issue.

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

#222

Post by nmgycombinator »

geekraver wrote: post #216

This is one of those places where having a selected “security image” makes sense. That popup should not just be easily spoofed text.

I agree with you. However, in this case, I was abusing a legitimate OS prompt (not just making my own), so I don't know if a security image would be a barrier there. It would definitely be one for instances where malicious apps make their own pop-ups.

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

#223

Post by nmgycombinator »

floatrock wrote: post #51
sefrost wrote: post #2

My work Mac regularly pops up an alert box claiming that Slack is “trying to install a new helper tool”. I have no idea why or what it means. I asked IT how I could verify it was legit and they didn’t know. I often wonder if this could also be exploited because it asks for a password and it keeps popping back up every time I click cancel.

Not an os-x developer, but I've always wondered are there any OS guardrails against any (malicious) application showing a window styled the same way as that popup box and just stealing your password?

I mean, I don't know how there would be? Unless they were scanning the text of every pop-up for words convincing the user to enter their computer password. There would be no way to determine intention without some sort of language analysis.

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

#224

Post by spoonsort »

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…

Yes, this is the whole issue with these kinds of systems. The message gets lost in translation to the user. An OG java applet would say "this app is signed, do you want to continue", and the engineer at the bottom is the only one that knows what that even really means, which is that the applet gets to run outside the sandbox if the user runs it. Windows UAC is similar, as are most Linux desktop security mechanisms.

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

#225

Post by thewebguyd »

pjmlp wrote: post #200
muppetman wrote: post #45

I remember the I'm a Mac and I'm a PC ads that mocked this on Vista. And now my Mac is worse than Vista. It's so annoying.

Yes, Windows has had quite a few years to improve the experience of UAC, on the other hand there are plenty of other stuff to complain about.

At least Windows now makes the UAC dialog distinct from the rest of the OS and any other Window. macOS (and most linux DEs too) just look like any other application dialog, easily spoofed.

UAC on Windows opens up on the secure desktop, which is isolated in protected memory and not accessible to other processes. It's also visually distinct, hiding all other UI elements, and nothing else can present the actual secure desktop, only UAC can. Granted, I've seen some fairly convincing looking fake prompts (that regular users would fall for) but to me they were still obviously fake, and they were unable to hide all UI elements like UAC does.

The secure desktop for UAC is also supposed to help prevent cursor offsets and other attacks (replacing the system cursor with fake one that shows as if it's over the "no" button but is actually going to click on "yes").

macOS could really use something like that for it's prompts, and I don't know why any other OS hasn't implemented something like UAC's secure desktop.

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

#226

Post by SSLy »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #212
bigyabai wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god, don't get me started... 1. iCloud nags never go away if you don't log into iCloud 2. Apple Music is just an advertisement by default and "conveniently" opens every sound file mimetype 3. Functionally useless subscription slopware like AppleTV+ comes installed by-default for no reason 4. Package management is a colossal clusterfuck that can't even enforce package parity across system architectures 5. Apple sti…

Sometimes I consider looking switching back to MacOS (left because OS X 10.7 was becoming too much like iOS and I don't like the idea of apps having to be signed and/or in an app store) and holy shit I am glad I left.

it's still better than windows. Compared to Gnome or KDE one could argue either way

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

#227

Post by thewebguyd »

nmgycombinator wrote: post #221
mike_hearn wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is a program downloaded from the internet" isn't a push to the app store. It predates the Mac App Store, iirc. It's another quick security hack (as they often are in any OS). Many years ago someone noticed that apps can pick any icon they want. And, therefore, if you could convince a browser to download a file to ~/Downloads (not hard), the user might look inside and find what appears to be a harmless JPEG or W…

That's a fair point. But did Mac have the same issue as Windows where file extensions were not shown by default? That feels like it would have been the core issue.

There is a "show all file name extensions" option in Finder, but I don't recall if it's on by default or not as I haven't had to set up a fresh macOS install in a while and I've always had it turned on.

But, macOS isn't like Windows - the file extension doesn't matter. I can have a "file.txt" but it's actually a .xlsx excel workbook, and Excel will open it just fine (albeit, with a warning that the file extension doesn't match but that's dependent on the application presenting a warning). Windows actually uses the file extension to determine the type, macOS (and other *nixes) don't, they'll use some other file metadata. You can put whatever extension you want on a file, it doesn't matter except for determining what default app will attempt to open it when double clicking it in Finder.

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

#229

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

nmgycombinator wrote: post #180
ronnieboy493 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If macOS still attached modals to windows I think this might be less of an issue [0]. Not fixed, but less bad. In the previous screenshot, the modal lays over the toolbar which really reads as "part of the application". Steve Jobs, when demoing Aqua, made a point of the pain that is detached modals[1]. But here we are, detached modals, because of Apple's weird fetish for mobile UI on everything. --- [0] https://kagi.…

Damn, that really puts things into perspective. Granted, attached modals presuppose there's a window to attach to. But I think that would probably be true 9 times out of 10.

Even if not, attaching to the menu bar (with some “chrome” that goes above the menu bar itself, which normal windows don't (can't?) do) would be superior to attaching to nothing.

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

#230

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

ryukafalz wrote: post #132
nmgycombinator wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The Plessey 250 was a great one... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessey_System_250
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