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

321–330 of 649 posts

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

#321

Post by murermader »

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 .

Just read the german version of that article, and they way the talk, and the way it is represented does not sound professional at all. It often sounds like a parody, for example calling Apple „Big Brother“ for offering a cloud service.

Its sounds really polemic and takes away some of its credibility, because of weird wording, and leaving out some information here and there so some things sound worse than they are.

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

#322

Post by gumby »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #307
gumby wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, I am talking of the old windows mfc doc that came printed on paper.

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

#323

Post by chrisshroba »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #164
chrisshroba wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, my hacky solution to this is this script which kills all the background processes that use significant bandwidth. If you're interested in how I came up with the list of processes, I can share the BitBar [1] script I wrote for monitoring per-process network usage (I wrote a small wrapper around nettop that logs to a db, which is read periodically by my BitBar script to show me the per-process usag…

please share the script for monitoring per-process network usage! I'd love it.

I just pasted the relevant files in here. At some point I'll try to make this a bit more professional and easy to use, but for now it works!

https://gist.github.com/chrisshroba/e31fd89b6a560733d3f915e8...

(ps if having an easily installable version of this would be helpful to anyone reading this, please comment or upvote this and maybe I'll prioritize it :) )

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

#324

Post by novok »

adambatkin wrote: post #121
indymike wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just moved from Macos to Linux. The Linux desktop experience has improved a lot in the past five years (at least KDE has).

Linux on the desktop and Linux on the laptop (heh) has definitely improved. It _sometimes_ needs a little tweaking to get it right, but KDE/Plasma also happens to offer that level of "tweakability" that should satisfy almost all semi-mainstream users (at least anyone coming from Windows or Mac). Compared to my first Linux laptop (a Sony Vaio circa 2000), my current XPS 13 works as well as any Mac laptop I have ever o…

Is there a 'little snitch' for desktop linux with the speed of it's UI in setting networking rules?

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

#325

Post by fsflover »

murermader wrote: post #321
fsflover wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just read the german version of that article, and they way the talk, and the way it is represented does not sound professional at all. It often sounds like a parody, for example calling Apple „Big Brother“ for offering a cloud service. Its sounds really polemic and takes away some of its credibility, because of weird wording, and leaving out some information here and there so some things sound worse than they are.

I agree with you, the style could be much better. However it does not change the listed facts.

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

#326

Post by dylan604 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #314
dylan604 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple has a three year warranty which means yours may have run out or is about to run out. If you still have time, get your keyboard replaced for free: https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-n... (it also means they have to replace your mobo and battery due to brilliant Apple engineering). It doesn't fix the problem, but it resets the clock until they fall off again. In Texas, it was <48 hours bet…

The big question is will they extend the warranty by the number of months the Apple Stores were closed due to pandemic lock down? My keycaps didn't start misbehaving until about April.

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

#327

Post by lovehashbrowns »

notamy wrote: post #138
api wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If enough people said to Apple "hey, this stuff is not acceptable and we won't pay for it" and then they actually did follow through, Apple would stop. My point is that the vast majority of people don't say that, only a very tiny minority. The vast majority of people want convenience, not control. They want their stuff to "just work" because even if they do have the technical knowledge they don't have the time to scr…

> They want their stuff to "just work" because even if they do have the technical knowledge they don't have the time to screw around with fixing their computer. And that's why I picked up an MBP this year; it's caused me way less grief than my various Linux boxen have.

It's the opposite for me. Pop!_OS has caused me the least amount of grief. I tried switching to it as my main workstation but, sadly, Zoom doesn't run very well (in my experience). It crashed often and started using 100% CPU on all my cores.

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

#328

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

api wrote: post #33
3pt14159 wrote: post #6

This is one of those tough cases where software cuts both ways. Some people are smart, informed developers that install a trusted tool to monitor their traffic and have legitimate reasons to want to inspect Apple traffic. They're dismayed. Most people are the opposite and this move protects the most sensitive data from being easily scooped up or muddled in easily installed apps, or at least easily installed apps that…

Tech savvy users are not just the minority. They're also cheap. They've been conditioned by the FOSS movement to think all software should be free as-in-beer. (The people who started FOSS didn't say that, but that's what it's become.) They say they want free as-in-freedom, but since they are not willing to pay for it they don't exist. Those who pay set the agenda for everything. Developing a truly polished operating…

> Tech savvy users are not just the minority. They're also cheap.

Bologna. I spent $4,000 for this MBP, and I've spent many hundreds on accessories, and thousands of dollars on software to run on it. I do everything on it. It is the center of my digital life.

That being said, the day I go to do something on this machine and find that I can't is the day I go buy a sub-$1,000 PC laptop, and go back to Linux (which I ran on the desktop for 19 years). Apple should be very careful how hard they squeeze here.

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

#329

Post by Wowfunhappy »

rootusrootus wrote: post #292
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...no, I don't think they could. Is there an example you're thinking of? Up until recently, Little Snitch monitored network traffic in kernel space.

Off the top of my head, I think it was Photoshop or something else along those lines (it's been a few years). It installed itself a little helper tool that ran as root which could talk to the licensing servers without tripping Little Snitch. I don't run Little Snitch any more, so it may no longer work that way. Some software (games seem to be an egregiously bad offender) insists on communicating with seemlingly rando…

I definitely needed to let Photoshop CS6 through Little Snitch to activate a few years ago. (but frankjr also brought up a situation that I wasn't aware of.)

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

#330

Post by ryukafalz »

Spivak wrote: post #267
eptcyka wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Apple agreed. But on the other hand, there are use cases where checking for the existence of a default route is the best heuristic.

I mean that's what a default route is supposed to mean, right? That this machine can route to any address. It might not get there because of a firewall, or because nothing is at a given address but you're at least claiming to know what to do with a packet destined for anywhere.

I think that’s a reasonable assumption for applications to make. I think that’s a less reasonable assumption for your keyboard to make.
Post reply on HN