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A comment on Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur. Parent comment

Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by grishka on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @02:38PM (#24840861)
> I appreciate the desire at making a device difficult for a bad actor to get to your data

That's what FileVault is for. I don't understand what's the problem T2 is trying to solve by its existence. Being able to use something else to read the data from a drive you pulled out of your computer, after decrypting it with your password, is a feature, not a bug. T2 is a regression, not an improvement in security. You can't call it a security product if you keep the master key, which Apple does.

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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by derrick_jensen on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @03:26PM (#24841398)
One of the value props was the inability to reset and resell if it were lost or stolen. Now that it’s cracked there is more of an incentive to not try and find the owner.

As for actual data security you are probably right

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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by grishka on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @08:56PM (#24843893)
> One of the value props was the inability to reset and resell if it were lost or stolen.

It's sure one of those nice to have features, but there's no good reason why it has to be mandatory like it is. All in all, having a device purposefully retain some information when you factory reset it is user-hostile.

The "lost or stolen" argument also hardly holds for desktop computers like Mac Pro or Mac Mini or iMac, yet they still have T2s in them.

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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by hayksaakian on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @09:14PM (#24843967)
It seems like this is a feature designed to shrink the "used" market for Apple products -- and not a user benefiting feature.
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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by grishka on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @09:42PM (#24844092)
But one of the things about Apple products that makes people okay with the exorbitant pricing is the resale value. I thought Apple themselves realized this?
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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by thewileyone on Friday October 23, 2020 @02:02AM (#24866452)
No, they want both you and the potential pre-owned Mac buyer to buy a new device each.
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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by threeseed on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @01:42AM (#24845075)
> The "lost or stolen" argument also hardly holds for desktop computers

Why ? People's houses get broken into all the time.

And probably 99.999% of laptops never leave a person's house.

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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by Siira on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @03:43PM (#24841580)
Is the crack in hardware or software? Any links on it? I thought the iPhones at least could not be reset by thieves?
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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by lioeters on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @05:48PM (#24842687)
> The mini operating system on the T2 (SepOS) suffers from a security vulnerable also found in the iPhone 7 since it contains a processor based on the iOS A10.

> ..Using the checkm8 exploit originally made for iPhones, the checkra1n exploit was developed to build a semi-tethered exploit for the T2 security chip, exploiting a flaw. This could be used to e.g. circumvent activation lock, allowing stolen iPhones or macOS devices to be reset and sold on the black market.

> Since sepOS/BootROM is Read-Only Memory for security reasons, interestingly, Apple cannot patch this core vulnerability without a new hardware revision.

Crouching T2, Hidden Danger (2020-10-05) https://ironpeak.be/blog/crouching-t2-hidden-danger/

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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by jeroenhd on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @05:39PM (#24842622)
A demo of the T2 hardware exploit on iMacs can be found here: https://blog.t8012.dev/plug-n-pwn/

From what I could find, the encryption keys of the T2 are still secure but the OS running on it is not. Wiping the SSD and/or repairing another might be enough to resell the device without any locks but I'm not 100% sure about that.

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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by Polylactic_acid on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @01:13AM (#24844928)
Every device up to the iphone X has been cracked btw so the factory reset protection can be bypassed.
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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by Siira on Thursday October 22, 2020 @09:00AM (#24857504)
Can you provide some links?
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Re:Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu ... by jiveturkey on Tuesday October 20, 2020 @08:44PM (#24843832)
> I don't understand what's the problem T2 is trying to solve by its existence.

watch the 2 security briefings that Apple delivered at black hat. i think they are 3 years apart and each touched on different aspects. i might be misremembering and T2 is covered in just one of them.

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