akyuu

Non-paywall version: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/why-the-tech-world-thi...

As far as I know, it is factually correct.

https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/apples-poor-patchin...

Take a look at Jolla and Sailfish OS.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162368

https://sailfishos.org

https://archive.is/55fHg

It's because YouTube is now requiring a full JavaScript runtime in order to download and play videos. There are open issues regarding this in the relevant GitHub projects, but the fix has not yet been released.

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/14404

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/33186

See also previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45358980

I wonder if these protections will apply to macOS as well.

I agree. But regarding this specific game, it seems to work through Crossover (emulation) and Parallels (virtualization). You can also try Whisky and VMware Fusion as free alternatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iysOgfeWz1M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZzzPtHcw6k

I wonder how this will affect macOS security, since SPTM is not used according to Apple documentation: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/operating-system-in...

For now, I think existing exclaves such as the one that displays the camera indicator do not really apply to macOS (since MacBooks have dedicated hardware for that), but in the future there might be exclaves that do.

caveat: MTE is coming soon on iOS

Do you have a source on that? I'm interested.

Ongoing incident report: https://status.proton.me/incidents/wt2fwstm0rcg

I believe Chrome is also the only software that enables certain mitigations such as ProcessSystemCallDisablePolicy on Windows and NO_SMT and TECS on macOS [1]. I wonder if some of these OS features have been implemented at Google's request.

However, in the case of Spectre, I think the OS should try to prevent exploitation rather than end programs, with a user-facing toggle to disable mitigations per-program for compatibility reasons.

[1] https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2021/08/macos-11s-hid...

It would be interesting to have a list of modern cars without these kind of connected features, but I haven't found any.

Apple is still adding large amounts of new Objective-C code in each new macOS version [0].

I haven't found any language usage numbers for recent versions of Windows, but Microsoft is using Rust for both new development and rewriting old features [1] [2].

[0] Refer to section "Evolution of the programming languages" https://blog.timac.org/2023/1128-state-of-appkit-catalyst-sw...

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/27/microsoft_windows_rus...

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/31/microsoft_seeks_rust_...

It also adds a new permission prompt for screenshot and screen recording apps that doesn’t allow a user to permanently grant permission, but requires a weekly re-authorization.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/08/06/macos-sequoia-screen-recordin...

I think you can also disable hardware acceleration and that will prevent GPU from being accessible even with JavaScript enabled.

Lasse Collin has been working on xz for decades: https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/0...

Now, whether his GitHub account is currently being controlled by him is another question.

Also, for some more context: In 2022, Lasse said he was struggling to work on xz and was looking for maintainers, and mentioned Jia Tan: https://www.mail-archive.com/xz-devel@tukaani.org/msg00567.h...

Not exactly what you describe, but there's Yuka for processed products (food and cosmetics). You scan a barcode and it gives you a score based on the product composition, it's quite helpful: https://yuka.io/en/

Is there any other laptop manufacturer that offers generally better support than Apple? I'm asking because I'm genuinely interested.

You can disable JIT in Chrome (which also enables CET [1], just like in Edge) by executing it with

  --js-flags="--jitless"

[1] https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/12c232c43ce7324d30...

https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/

The Linux desktop technology stack lags behind Windows and macOS when it comes to security. The causes are both technical (see this comment [1] for an overview) and non-technical, often stemming from a fragmented development model where there are no clearly defined security boundaries. For example:

- There is no real concept of base system because distros are usually a patchwork of software from diverse sources. This means stuff like proper secure boot is not really feasible on any distro (although AFAIK the systemd/Fedora people are working on it with signed UKIs and immutable OS images).

- Some features that could live in userland for improved security are instead implemented in the kernel, while both Windows and macOS generally keep moving exploitable features like font rendering to userland.

- Distros often disable or disregard security features such as SELinux or mitigations like CFI.

Here [2] is a more detailed article examining the lack of security of Linux desktops in case you're interested.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502088

[2] https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html

Builds are reproducible [1], so you can compile them yourself and check they match the official ones. Additionally, official releases are signed and the update client verifies them and prevents downgrade attacks [2]. You can also install updates offline from a computer if you prefer [3].

[1] https://grapheneos.org/build#reproducible-builds

[2] https://grapheneos.org/releases#about-the-releases

[3] https://grapheneos.org/usage#updates-sideloading

No, AFAIK Morello project is about designing an Arm CPU with CHERI, a hardware architecture with extra security capabilities that is still WIP: https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2023/two_stories_for_what_is_c...

Consider using GrapheneOS instead of stock Android for an improved version of MTE (and extra security and privacy as a bonus): https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/8439-mte-support-status-for...

Stock Pixel OS has it as a developer option which isn't usable in practice since it breaks far too much. The implementation is also much less powerful than hardened_malloc.

We integrated it into hardened_malloc where it's able to provide stronger security properties than the experimental stock OS implementation.

When fully integrated into the compiler and each heap allocator, MTE enforces a form of memory safety. It detects memory corruption as it happens. 4 bit tags limit it to probabilistic detection for the general case, but deterministic guarantees are possible via reserving tags. In hardened_malloc, we deterministically prevent sequential overflows by excluding adjacent tags.

Also, currently it's not clear if it makes sense to enable kernel MTE:

MTE support for protecting the Linux kernel isn't enabled yet, but we can likely enable that by default too. However, it's currently part of kasan and is more oriented towards debugging than hardening. It's not entirely clear that enabling it in the current state is a good idea.

https://archive.ph/sMRUl

https://github.com/microsoft/snmalloc/blob/main/docs/securit...

From what I’ve read from some security researchers, glibc is not really focused on security. For example, it contains CPU-specific manually crafted assembly for optimization purposes, and its memory allocator implements exploitation-friendly features such as thread caches. I’m not surprised by this vulnerability, and I suspect there are many similar ones that haven’t been discovered yet.

musl (used by default on Alpine and Chimera Linux) and the BSD libc’s on the other hand are much more minimal and conservative.

If you mean restricting filesystem access to random programs, I think that's already possible on macOS (with TCC) and Linux (with Flatpak), but the underlying mechanisms aren't very robust and can be easily bypassed by malicious code.

If you mean a true capability-based OS, there is Fuchsia, which doesn't seem to be used yet, and RedoxOS, which is in development.

I'm curious about how they're going to manage this at the same time Linux LTS kernels are returning to being supported for 2 years rather than 6: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591050

And your Mac sends all the hashes as well, whether they are in iCloud or not.

Could you elaborate? I didn't know Macs send local file hashes to Apple even if you don't use iCloud.