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

Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 649 posts

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#301

Post by mdoms »

3pt14159 wrote: post #198
addicted wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything Apple can do that makes their platform less accessible to the users that you would not support?

Absolutely. For example, I think that the lockdown of the bios was a move that hobbled developers like myself that installed custom bios extensions. I used to be able to run raw linux on real hardware. Now I need to use a commercial virtual machine just to get the dev environment I want. The difference between the two is subtle, but true. I want true masters that understand what the tradeoffs are to make those hard c…

Interesting that it's only the thing that personally affects you that you object to

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#302

Post by mulmen »

radlad wrote: post #286
mulmen wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? When I’m out socializing there’s no spying to do. But as soon as I get back I will just log in and the spying begins. I’m so accustomed to flaky peripherals with Apple products I wouldn’t even be alarmed at the behavior.

I think you misunderstand. The idea is that if your keyboard is replaced with a keyboard that has modified (hacked) firmware, your computer will refuse to let you use it. To do this, it must obtain a cryptographic attestation from the keyboard firmware, proving that it has not been modified. Further, to avoid replay attacks it must include the current time in the message it signs. NTP is used by macOS to determine th…

I was thinking of an external keyboard. That might be the cause of confusion.

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#303

Post by rorykoehler »

simonklitj wrote: post #245
rorykoehler wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally charging on the left side ports makes the T2 chip overheat and crashes the machine on occasion.

What if you have a model with ports only on the left-hand side? Does it crash it as well?

I'm not sure. I have a 2019 mbp 16 with a dodgy logic board and while it crashes even without charging on the left it definitely crashes more often when charging on the left. I'm stuck in limbo because I need my machine for work. Will take it in when I have a break.

Some threads https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250905859

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2019-16-inch-macbook-pr...

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#304

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #205
junon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this is ever the case. What happens if you legitimately installed a new keyboard? Will Apple just... prevent you from using it?

I have a 2017 MBP. There are several keycaps that that are no longer physically connected to the key, so if I tilt the laptop 4 or 5 keys fall off. I have been dealing with it by using an external Apple keyboard (with added benefit of having 10-key and full sized arrow keys). Since it's on a desktop in this config, I have it set to never sleep so luckily I have not seen this unwakeable fuck up.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#305

Post by azinman2 »

Everyone seems to assume this is true, but are people also confirming this? I installed LittleSnitch recently on Big Sur and I’m constantly getting pop up’s for all of Apple’s internal daemons etc. While I haven’t tried the App Store specifically, I’m wondering if the person didn’t understand how things were configured and was allowing certain traffic thru. I can’t imagine there’s really some big conspiracy here.

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#307

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

gumby wrote: post #66
eptcyka wrote: post #21

Apple seems to do all kinds of weird networking _stuff_. For instance, during wakeup, your T2 equipped Macbook will wait for a DNS response and then use said DNS response to synchronize time via NTP before letting the user use the keyboard. Probably checking timestamps on signatures for the keyboard firmware, or something stupid like that. This only happens if it happens to have a default route. Similarly, all macOS…

> but is it really that hard to document these behaviors? I imagine it is, given the bureaucracy of a big company. Apple's documentation has long been really dreadful, mostly nonexistent and where it does exist, usually incomplete and even wrong. I've assumed it was because the code itself is developed by isolated groups while the documentation presumably has to touch all sorts of people (publishing, translation, lan…

> Apple's documentation has long been really dreadful, mostly nonexistent and where it does exist, usually incomplete and even wrong.

Anyone want to tell him about Microsoft's Azure or .NET documentation?...

It's the same all over.

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#308

Post by fsflover »

fsflover wrote: post #188
danmg wrote: post #150

If a third party did anything like this, it would be considered malware.

Many already consider Apple software malware: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html .

Not sure why downvotes: It's true that some people consider Apple as malware and they do have a point, including the present title.

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#309

Post by giancarlostoro »

beervirus wrote: post #256
giancarlostoro wrote: post #180

I mean I already knew something was weird when I couldnt su into root and do... root things without a bios hack on a Mac. Thats just not how Unix works at all... The whole concept of root is you are root no exceptions.

SELinux doesn’t let root just do whatever it wants.

It's typically not enabled by default though, but I suppose that's a fair point.

Re: Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

#310

Post by giancarlostoro »

kstrauser wrote: post #240
giancarlostoro wrote: post #180

I mean I already knew something was weird when I couldnt su into root and do... root things without a bios hack on a Mac. Thats just not how Unix works at all... The whole concept of root is you are root no exceptions.

That's absolutely not true. For instance, the BSDs have the notion of securelevels ( https://man.openbsd.org/securelevel.7 ) which severely limits what even the root user can do. SELinux can do a lot of the same things.

Ah I'm more familiar with Linux so that's my bad, it was still a shocking and annoying observation I had. It doesn't fully bother me cause I never even need full on root on a Mac but this one time I did and having to tell my wife (girlfriend at the time) how to do all of that over the phone was just suspect, just so she could root a tablet that had a kill switch (Nvidia Shield Tablet).
Post reply on HN