Proton.B: What this Mac malware does • Hacker News Board

Re: Proton.B: What this Mac malware does

#91

Post by somecallitblues » Mon, May 15, 2017, 11:34 AM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #64

yborg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You people are doing something seriously wrong. About the only time I need to enter iCloud credentials is when I reboot my system, which is maybe once a month, or buy something. Complaining about credential entry on a new device install in this context is also kind of irrelevant, this malware doesn't strike during a new OS update.

I'm not sure why you've got downvoted, but I can confirm, that I'm using Macbook, iPhone, iPad and I very rarely have to enter iCloud password. I don't even remember last time I did it. I'm not reinstalling stuff or whatever, usually I'm working with programs I'm using and only password I'm constantly typing is password from locked computer or pincode for phone (and even those could be eliminated with modern touch bu…

It's the anti Apple sentiment on HN. Nothing Apple is good anymore. But yeah, I can't remember either the last time I had to enter the iCloud password.

Re: Proton.B: What this Mac malware does

#92

Post by smackfu » Mon, May 15, 2017, 12:18 PM UTC

yborg wrote: post #39

inopinatus wrote: post #32

"Dialog boxes asking for passwords are a very popular social engineering tactic designed to trick users into giving attackers their passwords" Apple is extremely guilty of normalizing the frequent entry of passwords. I recently reinstalled a Mac and an iPad, and for each device I must've entered my Apple ID password seven or eight times. in the normal course of getting things done I then enter either this, or my loca…

You people are doing something seriously wrong. About the only time I need to enter iCloud credentials is when I reboot my system, which is maybe once a month, or buy something. Complaining about credential entry on a new device install in this context is also kind of irrelevant, this malware doesn't strike during a new OS update.

I've had almost all of my Apple devices at some time or another just randomly pop up a "please sign into your Apple ID" dialog in the middle of some other work. I think it's probably related to update checking? But it's definitely something Apple is responsible forZ

Re: Proton.B: What this Mac malware does

#93

Post by eriknstr » Mon, May 15, 2017, 1:01 PM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #71

eriknstr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because since the only way that a program can have access to information is by explicitly handing that info to the program from another program the only place you enter a password is on your login screen.

Login password perhaps (at least plain text version of it), but account info (including cookies) in a browser for example would be accessible, as well as anything on disk.

>anything on disk

Not if the file system is isolated per app as I said.

Re: Proton.B: What this Mac malware does

#94

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, May 15, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

AckSyn wrote: post #31

eriknstr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic about how users feel or about that kind of configuration for UAC, but personally it's one of the many things I dislike when I'm on a Windows computer. For power users it's annoying and disruptive. For users that might benefit the most from it they quickly learn to press ok always whenever they are prompted for something, no matter what it's asking. In my opinion, an ideal OS would h…

> For power users it's annoying and disruptive Let me stop you right there. As a sysadmin, UAC is both effective as it is necessary. I absolutely don't want any application a user can launch with a mere YES/NO prompt but proper secondary credentials, interactively or by some nefarious app spawning other processes, to have the ability to gain an administrative level of access over the local machine. Unless it's absolu…

I find it funny that one of my complaints with my current work environment is that the GP UAC setting for power users is just slightly too low. As a Power User (subclass Developer), I know its my job to not do something stupid (with great power, comes great responsibility, after all) and I happily lean on UAC to do its job and help catch me from some of my own stupidity.

I like the Secure Desktop and its forced context switch and I've worked to train myself that A) as a Power User, if I'm pushed to the Secure Desktop its "Serious Business" and pay attention, and equally importantly B) as a Developer, if my app is pushing to the Secure Desktop and it's not for something critical to system security, I wrote something wrong (or one of the libraries I'm depending upon did), because my non-Power Users should probably never see Secure Desktop prompts in almost all of the apps I write.

I don't particularly want and am not sure I need to input secondary security credentials every time I see the Secure Desktop, but I'm happy with the default options in Windows these days and as a Power User welcome it.

(As for feature whitelisting, I think this is an underappreciated part of the Universal Windows Platform [UWP] still. I'm hoping that as more Enterprises start to see Windows 10 S they will pick up on the platform benefits to the UWP and start to mandate Store/UWP-only development. I think the Appx app model of UWP is a game changer for a lot of Enterprise security and that if some Enterprises weren't clinging so hard to "oldest LTS Windows Microsoft supports" deployments, aka Windows 7 is the current Windows XP, there would be a giant demand for UWP-friendly Enterprise developers that I've not yet started to see.)