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Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by bitwize on Monday September 04, 2023 @10:06AM (#37380595)
Apple has developed the first and only generally available "evil maid" resistant computer systems. Part of participating in this secure ecosystem involves more effort on your part to comply with the security requirements.

Or you can just develop for vulnerable-as-all-getout Linux or Windows systems. Your choice.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by BiteCode_dev on Monday September 04, 2023 @10:40AM (#37380910)
Having an evil made fidling my computer is not a big worry in my life. Not being a slave to the gafams is.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by acdha on Monday September 04, 2023 @11:44AM (#37381583)
It’s not just the evil maid but what happens if your device is stolen (or scanned by the police), or you run malware by mistake and want to restore it to a trustworthy state. Most people should worry about those more than the evil maid scenarios.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by wkat4242 on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @12:11AM (#37387755)
The police regularly have zero day tools available like pegasus and celebrite. It doesn't really protect against well funded attackers.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by acdha on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:22AM (#37392912)
Notice how those tools don’t have perfect coverage, often don’t support fully patched devices or only work with e.g. short PINs, and in high profile cases it often takes months to crack iPhones? Nobody said this is easy but it’s a lot harder than it used to be.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by BiteCode_dev on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @03:04AM (#37388739)
None of those scenarios matter to me:

- I can't prevent the police from pegasusing my device.

- I haven't have anyone infected by a malware in years, no matter the brand of device.

- Most thief won't be able to do anything with any of my devices, no matter the brand. They are not very smart, and can't deal with a bios password, an encrypted disk or even simply a locked smartphones. They steal it anyway, and throw it away when it fails.

But in the end, I don't optimize my life for the rare occasion of being stolen.

I optimize it for my day to day problems, like being able to use my machine to do what I want to do every day, without having to hope I'm allowed to do it by corporations.

I'm much more worried about the state of society that losing a phone once to a thief.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by acdha on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:26AM (#37392973)
This is why I said “most”. People here are freakishly unlike the average user and I think it’s quite reasonable to optimize for 95% of the market.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by davidmurdoch on Monday September 04, 2023 @10:44AM (#37380946)
If security was a spectrum Apple has gone into ultra-violet. If The Onion did tech jokes there'd be a headline that reads: The iBrick - it doesn't work, but at least it's hacker-proof!

But thanks for reminding me I have a choice, which I actually do not.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by realusername on Monday September 04, 2023 @11:03AM (#37381143)
> Apple has developed the first and only generally available "evil maid" resistant computer systems.

If you exclude themselves from the threat model of course, which I don't see why you would

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by acdha on Monday September 04, 2023 @11:46AM (#37381593)
Those are separate threats. You must accept the risk of your hardware manufacturer being compromised but that’s very different from also accepting the risk that any third-party with brief physical access can compromise your device.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by realusername on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @02:36AM (#37388568)
What happened is that instead of the user having all the rights, now it's Apple having them all instead. Not a single security problem was reduced here, the thread model just moved from users to Apple.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by acdha on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @08:55AM (#37391000)
> Not a single security problem was reduced here, the threat model just moved from users to Apple.

If you don’t understand why this isn’t true, I would respectfully start reading about what the platform does. It’s not like it was around the turn of the century where PCs and Macs were roughly equivalent.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by realusername on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:19AM (#37392849)
I know what the platform does, and that's why I have this opinion and also why I don't want any of it.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by acdha on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:21AM (#37392889)
Not wanting it is a valid position. Lying about it not solving real problems is not.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by realusername on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:32AM (#37393085)
I'm not saying it doesn't solve real problems, I'm saying its swapping problems into others.

Sure you can find some problems that have been solved but for each of those, there's a brand new problem created and not necessarily any better than the previous one.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by smoldesu on Monday September 04, 2023 @11:25AM (#37381375)
> the first and only generally available "evil maid" resistant computer systems.

"resistant" is a pretty low bar to pass. Do we get to include the Nintendo Switch for having eFuses?

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by anthk on Monday September 04, 2023 @12:45PM (#37382178)
You are deluded. Once they get physical access, you are out of luck.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by watermelon0 on Monday September 04, 2023 @01:26PM (#37382700)
Do you have any evidence to support this?

macOS @ M1 boot process looks similar to that of iOS devices: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secac71d5623/...

Under the assumption that SIP is not disabled, and computer doesn't have any 3rd party kernel extensions installed (both of which are safe to assume for most people), it's close to impossible to inject something in the boot chain.

---

I think the best possible option might be to replace the keyboard with the one with a hardware keylogger, and record the actual password.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by anthk on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:40PM (#37385372)
Yes, that option with the keyboard would be the easiest option. See? The point on encrypting your whole disk is not to avoid tampering, but to lock your machine in public places and be sure that no one can access your data upon placing that disk in another machine, or even trying to boot it.
Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by kaba0 on Monday September 04, 2023 @03:12PM (#37383873)
As always, security always operates with some threat model in mind. Of course some government-level agency with physical access and any amount of money to spend could likely get access to your device (though the usual $5 wrench is probably still the "better" way) at the price of a (or a few) zero days. But you are likely not a key person in toppling a government and it would be a giant waste on their parts.

The threat model the general populace faces ranges from something as mundane as your ex wanting to extract something from your device to basically being the know-all key to every important document, photo and data you might have. I think I can safely say that under this circumstances not even physical access poses a real threat to the device's security -- it is tamper-proof to replacing most critical parts and the boot-sequence is cryptographically secured. Biometric data is not stored in software, so not even that can be spoofed.

Re:Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to... by wkat4242 on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @12:09AM (#37387743)
Yes they have but it shouldn't have to mean that the vendor has more control and trust than the user.