I think I’m probably being dumb, but the gotcha here seems to be - ‘if I give an application permission to access a folder, it has access to the files in that folder’ - which is what I would expect??
Yes, you need to read more carefully. In particular:<p>“8. Confirm that Documents access for Insent is still disabled in Files & Folders.<p>“9. Whatever you do now, the app retains full access to Documents, no matter what is shown or set in Files & Folders.”<p>[…]<p>“Access restrictions shown in Privacy & Security settings, specifically those to protected locations in Files & Folders, aren’t an accurate or trustworthy reflection of those that are actually applied. It’s possible for an app to have unrestricted access to one or more protected folders while its listing in Files & Folders shows it being blocked from access, or for it to have no entry at all in that list.”
"6. Click on Open from folder and select your Documents folder there. Confirm that works as expected and displays the name and contents of one of the text files in Documents."<p>It's because in step 6 the user explicitly selected the Documents folder.<p>The app can access the Documents folder because the user chose that directory in the native file browse dialog during the same run of the app. IMO that's a reasonable trade-off.
The problem is that this given permission doesn’t show in Files & Folders, and after turning it on and off there it still persists. The only way to revoke it is using some CLI command and restart the computer.
That's not what's happening here.
Forget about the first 5 steps. If you install the app and start from step 6, the behaviour will be the same. If the user chooses the Documents folder in the browse window in an app, the app can use the contents of the Documents folder without the need for that permission in the Settings page.<p>The Privacy settings applies only to access to the Documents folder without the user interaction.
I think the issue here though is that the permission for access remains even after you're not using the open/save dialog and that's not obvious (or controllable from the UI) after the fact.<p>I think it's reasonable to expect that an application gets access to a file you access through open/save, but the fact that the access to the directory and all the items in that directory persists after that isn't necessarily expected. Especially given that the near equivalent workflow on iOS doesn't behave like this and that's what a lot of users would probably expect. On iOS an app can ask for access to your photos, which you can allow, or limit to specific photos or deny. If you allow access to specific photos and then the photo selector appears, even if you chose an album, the app will only get and retain access to the specific individual photos you gave it access to. It can not read the contents or even the names of any of the other photos in your library.<p>It seems pretty reasonable to expect that if the "Documents" folder permission is turned off for an app on macOS and you have given the application access to a specific document inside your documents folder, that the application would not also get (and retain) access to read from all the other folders and files within your documents folder.<p>I agree that this is the default behavior of most desktop OSes (including macOS), but it's also something that seems reasonable for Apple to change given how important sandboxing is to them in general, and how important it is in the broader context of always connected computers with multitudes of arbitrarily networked applications running.
> That's not what's happening here.<p>No, it is, the comment you're replying to is correct in what it said to you.<p>> The Privacy settings applies only to access to the Documents folder without the user interaction.<p>Yes, BUT, the user interaction is irrevocable. There are two user interactions here, one is "please access Documents this one time" and the second is "please don't let this app access Documents again."<p>Of course, if the stakes were higher you wouldn't even think to defend this behavior. Like if you were dealing with a nuclear weapon launcher and there was a big panel saying "TARGETING SYSTEMS: 0 targets (Permission Lock sandbox excluding 450 potential targets needing approval)" and then you poked around and found out "uh... why can I still go into the interface and target Milan and the big glowy 'launch missiles' light then starts lighting up and presumably I can launch a nuclear strike on Milan?!" and someone says, "oh yeah, that's because back when we were demoing it, the general had us punch in a random city to show what the targeting UI looked like, and we randomly chose Milan... it's okay, to fix it someone just needs to go and manually remove the warhead and put in a different one and then we'll restart the system and it'll forget all its targeting data for the old warhead" -- that'd strike you as unsustainable.<p>But this is very low-stakes for us so it seems less outrageous, but fundamentally it is a solid buggy behavior, "The UI makes it sound like there is only one system at play here, but there are actually two and the other system can override a specific revocation that's placed at the level the UI controls." Even if there are going to be two systems, you expect that their security controls will <i>both</i> be followed, or that the second one will know enough to be able to say "I say no, but I am being overruled" in its status panel.
The point is that (a) it’s misleading that the app has access to the folder while the settings claim that it doesn’t, and (b) there is no reasonable way for the user to revoke the implicitly given permission.
You don't need that permission if the user gives their implicit consent by selecting the Documents directory in the browse window. That's why most apps don't even show up in the Privacy Settings at all. Most apps don't need that, because they don't try to access that directory on their own. They only do it when the user selects the directory.<p>I guess the improvement can be to show the implicit consent in the privacy settings page as well, and have a way to revoke it.
Yeah, it's less of a "GOTCHA!" and more of a weird use case that Apple engineers probably didn't think through all the way. Doesn't seem like a difficult fix at all.<p>If the app opens a window and prompts the user to select a directory to save a file or load a file, should that access be recorded in the privacy settings page? I'd argue that maybe there should be a verbose version of the privacy settings page, where if you _really_ want to you can see every dir that every app has ever accessed, but the vast majority of users don't care.[0]<p>I'm less caffeinated this morning though so maybe I misread the whole argument.<p>[0] edit: And whether the app still has access to that dir. Which maybe that was the point of the article. I am just skeptical generally of these kinds of exposés because while they're generally pretty fair, they'll inevitably get picked up by the geniuses on r/pcmasterrace who will spin it into "Apple Privacy and Security Settings Let Terrorists Invade Your Family Photos"
I don't think any long-term implicit consent is acceptable. I would <i>not</i> expect that after opening one document in a folder without being shown any permission prompt, that permissions have been permanently altered. I would never even go look to see if it was "implicitly permitted".<p>Without a prompt or notice, I would expect only that the app has access to the file or directory I chose until the app is closed/quit.
Why should the permission even persist that long? You might leave that app running for the next two years.<p>Shouldn't a temporary access be temporary? Possibly scoped by time? Possibly scoped to a single access?
Because the app may generate more than one descriptor for it or perform more than one read or write operation in the normal course of usage. If I open a document, and come back to it 6 hours later and click the save button, I would expect it to save the document.
How would the app be able to reopen the file then?
The real problem with this isn't so much that it doesn't show the implicit consent. That would be nice but not a big deal. It's that it shows explicit non-consent that is getting ignored.<p><pre><code> 8. Confirm that Documents access for Insent is still disabled in Files & Folders.</code></pre>
Other comment seems accurate
You “feed” it the document.<p>Same way you select a picture on iOS. It is your deliberate decision and intent to open the document with that application.<p>That is totally different from the application having permission to scan and view anything in for example the downloads folder
When you use iOS's "limited access" permissions to give an app access to some of your photos but not the whole library, the photo picker UI does a pretty good job of letting you easily do three things:<p>1) Grant access to a photo<p>2) Identify which photos you've granted access to<p>3) Revoke previously granted access<p>macOS's concession to give access to whole folders at a time is necessary for real software to work, but they haven't done a good job of items 2 and 3.
Sure.<p>But the proper api call to make is selecting a picture. Not access to the photo library. That is an api design flaw, and simply a bad / obsolete implementation by the app developer.<p>The complaint of the OP is that he can still open a file which is in the downloads folder. But that’s not what the user is doing.<p>There’s no reason to give folder access at all. (Except for file sorting apps etc).<p>The only “reason” would be that it’s more difficult for developers to atomically overwrite a file in the same locations.
And quite frankly, they should (and perhaps already do) have api calls for exactly that.
I think this is why many apps request access sometimes.
I'm trying to think of a scenario where a users hits Open and picks a directory but does not want the software to have access to the contents of that directory. If you don't want it to access a folder, then don't open a folder in it.<p>This behavior gets used all the time in things like opening a folder in your IDE so it can access the whole project.<p>The OS does allow file pickers that can only pick files and not directories (set canChooseDirectories = false), and if an app has no legitimate reason to need a directory they should do that, but the fact that you can grant permissions isn't the problem. What they need to fix is that you're granting permanent permissions with no indication that you've done it and no way to remove them.<p>To anyone at Apple reading this - please do not draw the conclusion "permissions to access a previously opened file or folder should expire after 24 hours" there are already more than enough permission prompts.
> I'm trying to think of a scenario where a users hits Open and picks a directory but does not want the software to have access to the contents of that directory.<p>Firstly: If that user has explicitly disallowed access to a particular directory in a system-wide filesystem access control dialog, the intent to prevent access to that directory seems completely clear. In cases like this, it seems fine to me to have a "Grant read/write/list permissions to this directory? [Once] [Forever]" dialog that this access attempt causes to pop up.<p>Secondly: Directories with XY3 or XY1 permissions are not unheard of. If you want programs to be able to access a directory but not be able to list its contents, that's what you'd do. Perhaps you don't want people to be casually able to read the metadata on files in that directory. I have a vague, distant, and extremely unreliable memory that tells me that this was a technique used by some *nix mail or print spooling software way back when, but... "extremely unreliable memory".<p>This configuration would probably cause most GUI file pickers to shit their pants, but there's absolutely nothing that says that you need to have either 'r' or 'w' privs to a directory for a GUI file picker to actually function. Nearly every one of them that I've used contains a text box that you can use to punch in path components and filenames.
> during the same run of the app<p>Is this part true? The article's fix involves running a command and rebooting the computer. If restarting the app was sufficient, surely you wouldn't need the command/reboot?
Screen time is swiss cheese as well, not surprised.
This is so typical for Apple software "quality". While a truly love some of the features Apple has put into my pocket, I am noticing since <i>years</i> that at least iOS is the first commercially sold platform where I sometimes have to press a boolean toggle <i>twice</i> to have it take effect. They seem to have a lot of bugs around UI synchronisation.
The gotcha is “I gave it permission, then revoked permission in the UI, but it still has permission.”
That's not quite it either. It's more along the lines of "I revoked access via one mechanism, then granted it via a different mechanism, and the setting UI for the first mechanism doesn't reflect the second action".<p>There's no privilege escalation here, but there is a misleading privacy settings UI, which offers no obvious way to audit/revoke permissions in the second case
I think the issue is more like:<p>- it's non-obvious that the second mechanism (a file picker) is a permission granting mechanism.<p>- it's non-obvious that the second mechanism (a file picker) is a permission granting mechanism whose permission survives the action context that triggered the file picker (e.g "pick a folder to do action A" also magically imbues similarly gated actions B C D and Z with access to that folder, possibly non-interactively even).<p>- it's non-obvious that the second mechanism (a file picker) is a permission granting mechanism whose permission propagates to an action gated by the first mechanism, a first mechanism for which "Yes" means yes but "No" means "Maybe, depending on past unrelated actions that triggered an unrelated permission mechanism"
Good analysis.<p>This is a result of trying to retrofit a series of tighter security measures on top of a system that was not originally designed for them, in a way that is both understandable to users but also doesn't break back-compat with APIs (and therefore a lot of existing third-party apps that are seldom updated) too badly. I'm not saying Apple did a perfect job here, but it's a hard problem.<p>Yes, the problem could probably be "solved" by adding more UI, but "more UI" is not always a good solution. The more UI that exists, the less likely the user is to successfully navigate it. On the other hand, adding additional complexity to an existing UI is also fraught with potential for new bugs and edge cases. Again, not defending the status quo, but I can see how it might have ended up like this.<p>This is worth spending more time on trying to improve, and perhaps it is reasonable to expect better from an almost-$4tn company. But at the same time, a potential solution is far from easy or obvious, and there is a risk of making things worse if not done with an extreme level of thought and consideration.<p>(Alternate pessimistic take: A large number of users don't care or read anything, they just click "allow" on anything that gets in their way. A smaller set of users are terrified and disgusted by repeated invasions of the privacy and click "deny" on everything. None of these implementations are doing any good for either group. The allow/deny design pattern is badly broken and in need of rethinking.)
Not quite. The steps are revoking permission in the UI (which works as expected), then implicitly <i>granting</i> permission in a way that the UI does not reflect but quietly persists.
TFA intro (emphasis mine):<p>> In this Friday’s magic demonstration, I’m going to show how what you see in <i>Privacy & Security settings can be misleading, when it tells you that an app doesn’t have access to a protected folder, but it really does</i>.
One <i>might</i> expect macOS to recognize “you selected a folder that’s already got a UI associated with it” and to wire this up on the backend through the UI rather than creating a simple path exception that leaves the UI nonfunctional. I would have just filed a feedback report about it; but, the outrage-framing of that is, in historical context for this particular site, normal. They have posted extensively about Gatekeeper and TCC issues and seem to encounter them rather more reliably than others do, and released various tools (including today’s!) to support debugging, so certainly I empathize!
It’s really poorly written. After reading it all I still can’t figure out what’s the mechanism by which revoked permissions are hanging around, which is what would actually be interesting here.
It is poorly written. I have suspicion that the author is talking about the persistent file permission mechanism known as Security-Scoped Bookmarks, but the article makes it hard to understand what exactly is being discussed. It reads like a raw bug report without any analysis done.<p>And specifically they could show some code snippet to reveal what exactly the Insent app was doing. Was it calling startAccessingSecurityScopedResource of the NSURL class?
My impression is that the revoked permissions do not persist. Rather, an interactive window running under the user’s name has implied access to the user’s home folders, regardless of what’s been set under “Files & Folders” (which still applies for background/non-interactive processes).<p>I could absolutely be missing something here, but the title would be accurate in saying, “MacOS ACLs aren’t terribly intuitive”. But I think the behavior they’re documenting is intended behavior.
I’m glad I don’t even rely on this dumb system in the first place. I just run programs that don’t do shady shit. Wish I could disable these idiotic prompts entirely and go back to how it was before.<p>“Word” would like to access the files in your “Documents” folder<p>“Terminal” would like to access the files in your “Downloads” folder.<p>Yes, because I am telling them to access the files.
><i>I just run programs that don’t do shady shit.</i><p>you hand-audit every update for every program you run? can you share your workflow to do this?<p>otherwise, i am not sure how you can possibly guarantee that the programs you are running "dont do shady shit" (or, "wont do shady shit" in the future). there have been several compromises of non-shady programs and libraries in recent memory.
Wow... that would be great.<p>All that remains is an algorithm to reliably determine which programs do "shady shit". How is it that you determine that Microsoft updates have not been tampered?<p>(insincere) apologies for the snarky tone. You are making light of a very hard problem and default deny until confirmed by the user isn't a bad first approximation.
Eye-opening findings. After reading the article I revoked every folder permission and tested: Insent still reads Documents even when the UI shows "None". This is a serious trust failure; transparency is supposed to be the whole point of those preference panes.
That's the beauty of using a GUI-first operating system!<p>> only way you can protect your Documents folder from access by Insent is to run the following command in Terminal: tccutil reset All co.eclecticlight.Insent then restart your Mac
Jobs is turning in his grave. There are lots of stories of this conflict at NeXT and Mac OS X where there's a quick fix but not via GUI, which was one of the many things that incensed him.
Speaking of GUI weirdness, I've seen a couple of relatively newer macbooks do this thing where the laptop is shutdown with wifi disabled, but after login on startup the wifi icon displays the wifi scanning mode as if the wifi is enabled and looking for networks before reverting to the wifi disabled display icon.<p>Is this a GUI bug or is the wifi disabled setting overrided for a split second on startup? I haven't looked into it, but the latter would be extremely concerning.
based on my experience, I suspect the latter<p>similar, user-hostile behaviors I have found include:<p>- wifi network passwords are persisted through a system wipe and reinstall in recovery mode
- a phone home is required by an activation step during installation
- bluetooth is always re-enabled after an upgrade
So the title should be something more like "macOS apps retain access to folders after access is removed by the user".
The problem with Mac’s sandbox system is that it’s giving me some PTSD of Windows UAC. It’s inventing a solution to a problem that might exist in small doses, but instead gives users permission fatigue.<p>I personally think the traditional *nix model has served us quite well, and elective sandboxing using containers (à la Docker and so on) is quite good. The Mac sandbox model is probably ok for most normal users, but for power users is infuriating at times. Multiple restarts of Mac and various processes (and when you realize not enough scopes have been granted, another subsequent restart). I think Mac forcing <i>all users</i> into its sandbox system has been one of my least favorite impacts since upgrading macOS, leading to the enshittification of macOS.<p>The craziest thing is background processes started by Terminal/iTerm (such as tmux) can inherit Terminal or iTerm’s elevated status even when Terminal or iTerm are no longer running, dead, or killed. So you’ll have a bunch of elevated processes without the elevated parent or grandparent process running—it makes me feel the whole permissions scheme is more performative than actually useful.
BTW - UAC is not a security boundary, so UAC-bypass is not the same as privilege escalation, and there is no bounty for it, etc, etc. It's a common misunderstanding, probably in no small part due to Microsoft's own lack of communication around it.
Someone at Apple should watch some of their old ads.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwoluNRSSc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwoluNRSSc</a>
I think the bigger issue is that way too many devs still live in the extremely dated paradigm of “anything has access to everything all the time”, even though this model has repeatedly proven itself unworkable (particularly for anybody using proprietary software, which is notorious for sticking its fingers in places it has no business touching).<p>The way macOS handles permissions with user prompts might be the wrong UX, but giving every program carte blanche by default is definitely not the answer either.<p>It’s dangerous, particularly for those of us who are developing and publishing software that’s used by many thousands of people — we’re juicy targets and every time we disable protections in the name of convenience and carelessly run random third party software with unfettered access we’re playing with fire. I find myself consistently stunned by the flippant attitude SWEs take towards securing their systems. Our confidence that we’re too smart to fall victim is entirely misplaced.
Plus, Apple exempt their own apps from a bunch of these permissions (because it would be an unacceptable user experience for <i>their</i> customers)
Note that this isn't "Mac's sandbox system", it's TCC. That's an important distinction to make, because apps that have opted into the proper App Sandbox can't do this... they don't even have the ability to display a prompt for direct access to Documents/.<p>With the App Sandbox, sandbox extensions are issues whenever you open a file using the file picker. They only last until the app is restarted.<p>A caveat is that you can save "Security Scoped bookmarks" (basically a signed base64 blob [1]) and pass that around to preserve access, but that isn't very common.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.mothersruin.com/software/Archaeology/reverse/bookmarks.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.mothersruin.com/software/Archaeology/reverse/boo...</a>
I feel the opposite with Mac permissions (or Linux or Windows). Hardly anything asks me, and it seems like everything has access to everything. But same conclusion here, if I don't trust something, I want to explicitly sandbox it.
I feel like I can mostly use containers on macOS. Is there a different sense that people are using containers on *nix? Or are you referring to all the macOS specific software footguns?<p>I would like to be able to run arbitrary code with gradual/granular privilege escalation. (e.g iOS/android with more affordances and escape hatches. macOS is getting there, but it's been a pretty bumpy/potholed road). Right now if I download a random github repo, I'd put it in a docker container and give it ports/volumes/etc.
TCC is a different thing. Sandboxed apps work differently and won't need those TCC dialogs.
> I personally think the traditional *nix model has served us quite well<p>It has the <a href="https://xkcd.com/1200/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1200/</a> problem on almost all end-user setups.
One of the worst cases happens immediately after logging into a fresh Mac, or after upgrading one. You’re instantly hit with a barrage of requests from all the installed apps and their various permissions. It makes for such a terrible initial user experience, it’s utterly baffling someone at Apple has signed it off. They used to poke fun at Windows in their ads, but UAC has never been that terrible in my experience.
performative is right. files & folders says blocked. open panel access still works. the pane only knows about one path
I don't understand why OSX needs to restart the app to grant it permissions. The most annoying is video chat apps such as Teams and Zoom, having to close everything and reconnect if you want to share the screen or such. Perhaps there's a technical reason but it just feels like a lazy implementation.<p>But about the unix permissions model, is it really useful? During all my years of using linux on my personal machine, I've always had everything owned by my own user. Setting up specific users for programs would be a pain, and I don't think anybody does that? Servers is a different question, because then you're not actively using the system in the same way, which makes managing user accounts and their permissions on an app-level doable.<p>For normal users I think what's done on iphones and such works fairly well, and there they actually seem to have implemented it properly so that it doesn't require a restart to grant permissions.
Very much agree. In fact I don't remember Vista or UAC being as unreliable as the Mac now is.
Actually there is another way to reset the permission besides running tcutil reset.<p>Simply go to Security and Privacy and turn the permission on then back off :)<p>What happens here is the UI displaying the permission state is buggy, but the permission actually works. It's just hard to see its state.<p>Buggy UI, modern Apple...<p>By the way there is another problem with that UI. The checkbox is blue when on and grey when off... but only when the window has focus. When the window is not focused it's grey in both cases. Different greys but still greys. And if you don't spend all day looking at checkboxes in Mac OS, you may forget if left or right is on.<p>And this is on Sequoia not <the low contrast update>.<p>Edit: I wonder if a reboot would also make security and privacy read the status properly. But it would ruin my uptime, so I'll let someone who has an OS update to install check :)<p>Edit 2: And I just noticed. I have a TB drive hanging off my Mac Mini and my games are on it. So there's a bunch of games in security and privacy (mostly crossover entries, but also for example euro truck simulator which is native) because they requested access to "removable volumes". No shit, they're installed on said removable volume.
Is this a bug, security vulnerability, or just an oversight? It’s not clear to me.<p>As a precaution would it be a good idea to run that reset command for all apps?
This is an oversight in the UI. None of the systems are malfunctioning, it's just that there's no affordance in the UI for the implicit consent flow.
These are considered security UI bugs. They are a subcategory of security bugs, since they result in users lacking control or awareness over permissions. If this were a Chromium bug it would get a CVE.
It’s Apple’s performative “security” (showing popups and asking the user for all sorts of permissions) overlapping with some pragmatic choices about how files and folders work. For me the gap is in Settings & Privacy - 1) it should be clear that the app has been given permission and 2) it should be harder to give permission once you’ve explicitly disabled it. 3) (nice to have) Apple should get rid of permissions that make you restart the app because it’s 2026 lol.
There's another "security UI" issue in the latest macOS, that's been there for at least a few versions.<p>I go into "Privacy & Security", "Full Disk Access". A bunch of apps added themselves in there (Anki, Fission, Microsoft Autoupdate, WhatsApp), the toggle is disabled and I've never enabled it. Ok, whatever.<p>But when I go into "Files & Folders", and under those apps I see "Full Disk Access" in gray. Apps that have Full Disk Access <i>toggled on</i> look identical, with "Full Disk Access" in gray. What the hell am I supposed to make of that?<p>Is it a bug? Do they have full disk access? Is the UI trying to imply that those apps are solely controlled by the FullDisk toggle and are ineligible to request granular permissions for Desktop/Documents? Or that they are eligible, but haven't requested it? Or maybe they did request it, and I granted it, but I don't get to see it? Who knows?
That is really poorly worded by Apple, because if I understand it correctly, the "Files & Folders" list is just a list of apps that have <i>requested</i> Full Disk Access/FDA (or other locations).<p>It's really confusing that some of those settings can be toggled on/off, while the Full Disk Access is greyed out and can only be toggled under "Privacy & Security".<p>To add to the confusion, toggling FDA off just protects a few selected folders that Apple decided are extra sensitive, like:<p><pre><code> Messages ~/Library/Messages
Safari browsing history ~/Library/Safari
Cookies ~/Library/Cookies
Identity services ~/Library/IdentityServices
Spotlight data ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight
Phone call history ~/Library/Application Support/CallHistoryDB
Facetime data ~/Library/Application Support/Facetime
TCC database ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC.db
</code></pre>
"Normal" files and folders on your disk (including Desktop, Documents, Downloads, network volumes, and removable volumes) can always be accessed (even with FDA permission revoked!) after a simple prompt. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/security/controlling-app-access-to-files-secddd1d86a6/1/web/1" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/guide/security/controlling-app-acc...</a>
could the same be said of iOS?
It turns out the issue is a com.apple.macl extended attribute that gets set on the Documents folder and can't be removed, due to SIP.
What is the arcane Terminal command to undo this access?
The first thing I wondered after reading this article is whether there might be a scheduled task to run the permission reset similarly to how the author ran it via the command line.<p>It seems most likely that this is some kind of bug where that command or its underlying actions should be called every time the user unchecks something in the settings panel.<p>This is what we get when the iPhone’s permission system is grafted on top of a desktop OS that was never designed for it. I think they could have done something that is more Unix-like and yet friendly to the GUI end user.
is this is why apple pushed an update yestersay?
linux and unix before it has been a pretty consistent interface for decades, especially since the introduction of X windows in the 1980's..
[dead]
I guess yes
The post misunderstands how the permission system works.<p>Giving access to a file via the Open and Save panel is an explicit declaration of consent.<p>Because the panel is provided by OS itself, the app doesn't get access to the item until the user has selected a folder or file through that panel.
No, this is definitely a bug. The Privacy and Security panel is part of Settings, which is definitely part of the OS. Saying the Open and Save panel somehow has priority suggests that the Privacy and Security panel is not looking at the same parameters as the Open and Save panel, ergo a bug.
I never trust american and Chinese companies
It seems that author basically found a 0day and published it. It's for sure better than selling it on the dark web but maybe it's better first tell it to Apple?
Not exactly. It's not a "new" attack vector, any software which was malicious would have already been able to attack when you first gave it permission (a prerequisite for this sticky permission issue). If you had downloaded an app and discovered it was malicious the remedy would generally be to uninstall the app, not just "revoke the permission for the one folder".<p>It's not a good look for Apple, and it's not great that the permission revocation basically doesn't actually work, but any malware that could have infected the system due to this issue would have also been able to infect the system while the permission was still (intentionally) enabled.
Apple Security would instantly close it as "don't see the problem here" if you reported it to them. They have a poor reputation around TCC bug reports.
Not really, just an unintuitive security feature. You still need the user's permission to access that folder, but that permission is then persistent. I consider it a UX bug for sure but not an exploit.
can you trust vpn to run well on a mac tho. like mullvad or something good.
imo, you can't really ever fully trust a closed-source system, which is why I advocate for linux distros, even though I'm a mac user myself (for now)<p>VPN should be properly implemented though as you're able to verify network requests on your own and don't necessarily have to trust apple. Best guarantee is to have a VPN at router level that can't be circumvented by anything (+ a trusted router vendor)
Yeah, they run fine.
This is a few years old, but at one point Apple was happy to bypass VPN or firewall settings to allow their own apps to communicate[1]. I don't know if this is still true on Tahoe, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least the mechanism still exists. So "they run fine", but they may not do what you expect them to do when it comes to Apple's products/services.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/675671/apples-own-programs-bypass-firewalls-and-vpns-in-big-sur.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.macworld.com/article/675671/apples-own-programs-...</a>
Well duh, the purpose of Privacy and Security was never Privacy or security. The purpose is to lock you into Apple's ecosystem and prevent you from installing your own software.
Great insight! Thanks for sharing.
> Once you have downloaded Insent<p>As if that's going to happen.
This is exactly why the security model matters. If the OS or app can access your data, so can anyone who compromises it. The only real solution is client-side encryption where the server NEVER sees plaintext — your keys stay on your device.<p>We've been building something in this space — Cifer Security uses ML-KEM (post-quantum) for key encapsulation and Poseidon hashing, with Groth16 proofs for verifiability. The server is intentionally blind to what it's storing.<p>The macOS permission model is theater if the app itself isn't zero-knowledge. Privacy can't rely on UI toggles — it has to be cryptographic.
Another solution would be for people to make up their minds. Maybe it's time to give up entirely on multi-tasking support in the OS, because what's the point if all interoperability is going to be disabled "for security"? Might as well just go back to running one program at a time and close up all those security holes in one go.
Why everything has to be on the server? ok, Where are you going to store your client authentication tokens or decryption keys. A proper file system isolation is a key if you want a proper application sandboxing
Yet more AI slop on HN
I never used the ~/Documents folder. Lots of apps just trashed their stuff in there over the years making that folder entirely unusable for my actual document files. I would have to dig through the mess to find them. So I have to admit that I don't really understand the extra "care" Apple is doing to this particular folder. Same for the ~/Downloads folder: all my actual downloads go to some other disk, since the system disk is so small. Protecting this two folders would be entirely useless here.<p>IMHO where it really needs to be protected from when iCloud suddenly starts grabbing everything w/o the user's permission to upload it to some random Apple servers.
I was considering buying a mini Mac, but there wasn't a way to encrypt it fully with Veracrypt and in the case of Francis Rawls the feds got pass Apples vault encryption. With the recent iPhone notification storage revelation I don't trust Apple at all.
I couldn’t find any reference to File Vault being cracked in the Rawls case. Source?<p>Edit: I saw they accessed his Mac but they had his password. File Vault 2 wasn’t bypassed, and afaik has never been cracked.
Notification storage? What’s the story there?<p>Nevermind just saw this:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490</a>
I think it is an acceptable quirk for a permission system that has been retrofitted on top of an ecosystem which was not designed with that threat model in mind.<p>But sure, if I was assigned to make an all-purpose desktop operating system today from scratch, I would likely do this differently, but along with a bunch of other things I think (and the app would have to be implemented differently too).