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Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

blog.jacopo.io

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Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#81

Post by ben509 »

jrockway wrote: post #29

OCSP doesn't seem like the right protocol for this. Apple should probably just ship you a list of hashes of revoked certificates once a day, and should do the check locally. (Obviously, the global certificate database is too big to send to every user, but Apple should be able to determine the subset of certificates they trust, and the even smaller subset of those that are revoked or compromised.) To me, it sounds lik…

Going back to a CRL (certificate revocation list) for code-signing certs makes more sense. And, really, there shouldn't be a huge number of developer certs being revoked.

If that's happening, they need to put more work up front into certifying them in the first place.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#82

Post by jgilias »

So the takeaways are:

* Your Mac periodically sends plain text information about the developer of all apps you open, which in most cases makes it trivial for anyone able to listen to your traffic to figure out what apps you open. Better not use a Mac if you're a journalist working out of an oppressive country.

* Because of this Macs can be sluggish opening random applications.

* A Mac is not a general purpose computing device anymore. It's a device meant for running Apple sanctioned applications, much like a smartphone. Which may be fine, depends on the use case.

Yeah... No Mac for me anytime soon then.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#83

Post by randyrand »

chpmrc wrote: post #3
intricatedetail wrote: post #2

Apple should change their name to "Peeping Tim".

Did you even read the article? It clearly shows that all that's being sent to Apple is some opaque info about the dev certificate used for the app(s).

So opaque that this journalist figured out what it is and what it stands for in a few hours.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#85

Post by nojito »

smnrchrds wrote: post #53
olliej wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel Apple has done privacy well in so many cases, that the way this works is really disappointing :-/

Apple has done a fantastic PR job regarding privacy. I am more skeptical about the status of actual privacy given their iMessage situation and now this.

Calling Apple's privacy stance PR is extremely misleading.

It's been engrained in them since the 80s and with the growth of Google, it became fun to vilify Apple because of it.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#86

Post by cybralx »

paultopia wrote: post #60

Has anyone used a pi-hole to block apple privileged servers, like the OCSP one, while running Big Sur? I'm thinking of setting one up---not necessarily to block OCSP, because the points in this post about actually wanting to know when a certificate has been revoked are sensible---but to at least have the option in case of another disaster... Relatedly, does anyone know if Big Sur allows one to use a custom DNS server…

Custom DNS servers are available on Big Sur. My home network uses pfSense as a gateway for LAN. This gives more options blocking outbound connections or routing connections thru a VPN connection based on certain conditions.

https://www.pfsense.org

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#87

Post by john_alan »

banachtarski wrote: post #65

There will be a day when all apps on a mac will only be installable from the app store. Developers will be forced to buy macs and subscribe to Apple’s developer program to support it. Customers will be trained to not care. And HN Apple fanboys and fangirls will try to justify why this is a Good Thing(TM).

Tell me more about the future?

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#88

Post by smnrchrds »

olliej wrote: post #76
smnrchrds wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has done a fantastic PR job regarding privacy. I am more skeptical about the status of actual privacy given their iMessage situation and now this.

Their iMessage situation?

They backup the private key to iCloud unless you manually disable backups. So even though iMessage is advertised as E2E encrypted, for the vast majority of users, Apple can read each and every message.

(And even if you disable backups, Apple can still read most if not all of your messages, because the persons on the other side of the conversations have not disabled backups)

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#89

Post by claudeganon »

ravenstine wrote: post #16
josephcsible wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never asked them to do that in the first place, so I'll be blocking it from now on. Apple's working on making sure you can't block it. They already keep you from blocking their own traffic with Little Snitch and similar tools: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816

Isn't that just with Big Sur? Also, I'm using the hosts file method.

I don’t think it’s actually just in Big Sur. At the bottom of this post describing how to stop them from hiding traffic, they mention someone did a test on Catalina and ran into an issue with the Messages app:

https://tinyapps.org/blog/202010210700_whose_computer_is_it....

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#90

Post by tandav »

olliej wrote: post #76
smnrchrds wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has done a fantastic PR job regarding privacy. I am more skeptical about the status of actual privacy given their iMessage situation and now this.

Their iMessage situation?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25078317
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