This is amazing -- but every. single. update. disables it again
Why does the sudo file not persist between updates? This case is quite minor for personal computers, but what about companies that log in with yubikeys or smart cards? Do they have to reconfigure after every update too?
Thought on the second thought, I’ll continue to use the more “manual” method for now. As it gives me more control and it would be easier to switch off when touch ID sudo will be supported more officially.
This is a very macOS problem. Why does it reset every preference on updates? The one that kills me is wake-on-lan, that gets turned back on regardless. Hate!
Because, like ChromeOS/CoreOS, modern macOS now does image-based updates.
A macOS update isn’t “whatever was previously on your OS volume, plus arbitrary patch X”; rather it’s “a new, fresh OS disk image, written to a separate APFS volume, with a fixed SHA, with update transfer-size optimized by composing said image partially from files in your current OS, but only in such a way that the volume will still hash the same in the end.”
(In many ways, macOS’s update system now reuses the logic from iOS’s IPSW firmware-update system. You can even now download macOS updates from Apple as IPSW files, and then use Apple Configurator to push them to macOS devices.)
Unlike ChromeOS/CoreOS, after the first-round SHA verification of the volume, macOS will then patch the new OS-base-image volume with certain files from your current OS-base-image volume, if 1. they’re distinct from the ones it expected to be there, and 2. they appear on a whitelist of known-safe files.
If any of this patching happens, the OS volume’s metadata tree will then be re-hashed, and the new hash will be blessed by the volume-signing utility.
(If you’ve seen a “Recovered Files” directory on your desktop after an update, and it’s contained a “foo.system_default” file, that’s a copy of the file that macOS would have composed into the OS volume if it hadn’t found your known-safe customized file to use instead. /etc/shells is a usual trigger.)
Some preference files in /System/Library are known-safe; but others aren’t. It’s a whitelist, and it’s a conservative one.
Preference files in /Library live in the user volume, not the OS volume, and so will never be wiped. This is why most of the “trivial” preferences stick around.
Note that by “known-safe” here, I don’t mean “can’t be customized to malicious ends.” This isn’t a security thing. It’s an ABI stability thing. These files are safe in that they’re known to have the same ABI format between OS versions, and so keeping a customized version of them around won’t confuse newer versions of system daemons.
It’s about the same as if Linux had a set of known-safe DKMS modules that use interfaces that the kernel intentionally doesn’t change between releases, such that the kernel module files composed from those DKMS modules could be reused by the new kernel without requiring decompilation, rather than being tossed out at every single kernel update.
The thing that doesn't make sense here is that macOS discards randomly your settings, but it is also the only OS I use that regularly gets in a fucked up state where settings have to be nuked. I mean, here we are in year 37 of the mac and people are still zapping their PRAMs. The only improvement is you don't have to physically pull out the battery.
- If macOS is the only OS that you use regularly that gets in a fucked up state, then either you're not using Windows or it's gotten a lot better in the last few years. :) (I mean, it undeniably has gotten better, but I have Windows-using acquaintances who still kvetch about this issue pretty regularly.)
- I've been using Macs since 1999 and I don't think I've had to reset the PRAM to fix a problem since my Titanium MacBook Pro circa 2007. I've had to nuke other settings on occasion, but still generally have markedly fewer problems than I did in my Windows-using days. (Which were more recent than 1999, but still not that recent, so back to the "I'm sure it's better now" disclaimer.)
But, Apple definitely needs to have a better mechanism for managing config file updates than "yeah, we've put a few old config files in subfolders of this 'RecoveredFiles' folder, maybe they're useful, maybe they're not, good luck."
Windows definitely allows you to shoot yourself in the foot, but nowadays those settings are hidden away by non-flashy applications, which has now become synonymous with "advanced user shit I probably shouldn't be touching".
Though the difference is, if something gets royally screwed up on MacOS, at least there's a sane enough way to reset it. On Windows, it often entails a reformat.
And let's not get started on the Windows Updates. They too have the whole "reset settings" problem (e.g. "don't f&!king restart my computer randomly", which gets reset every somewhat major update).
Computing has changed since 2007, so you have to include Android, iOS, iPadOS, ChromeOS, and various flavors of Linux in that lineup to be complete, not just Windows and OS X.
Well, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, Linux has less of a chance of getting FUBARed up by mysterious settings glitches. (I have had a Linux install get spectacularly FUBARed at least once from a broken update process, but usually it's happened through operator error, albeit sometimes aided and abetted by some program's spectacularly bad UX.)
As for the rest, my suspicion is that the newer "mobile generation" OSes both tend to get messed up much less often this way and tend to have much less recourse to the user when they do. That's certainly true for iOS/iPadOS and I suspect it's true for ChromeOS; I suspect Android is probably somewhere between iOS and Linux on that scale.
> but it is also the only OS I use that regularly gets in a fucked up state where settings have to be nuked.
Windows gets into this state fairly quickly, too, but the failures are less dramatic so we just live with it.
At least with Debian, it only happens when I deliberately change stuff! Though the `xorg-server-video-intel` driver breaks features of post-2007 Intel cards, and it's installed by default, so… perhaps it isn't the perfect OS either.
True, but I guess 95% of mac users are still on Intel macs, are still being told by "genius" bar frontline support to reset the SMC / zap PRAM for any kind of issue, and this usually works, too. Jury is still out on whether the M1 auto-zapping architecture is better, or will just be more prone to being permanently messed up.
Well, the fact that nobody ever has to zap PRAM on an iOS device means that they’ve probably fixed that (or, since you can’t zap PRAM anymore, people just restore the device instead...)
>Unlike ChromeOS/CoreOS, after the first-round SHA verification of the volume, macOS will then patch the new OS-base-image volume with certain files from your current OS-base-image volume, if 1. they’re distinct from the ones it expected to be there, and 2. they appear on a whitelist of known-safe files.
Red Hat CoreOS (and other Linux systems managed with OSTree, such as Fedora Silverblue) now do something similar by merging the current /etc directory with the "upstream" version.
FreeBSD has an analogous mechanism called etcupdate[1]. I think Boot Environments[2] are pretty similar to SilerBlue but I don't know how BEs manage /etc.
Debian based systems use dpkg which has the option of confold and confnew. Difference is that the default is to ask the user what to do and unattended upgrades default to confold.
Why cant Apple use their TimeMachine tech to take a snapshot of the prefs on the existing, then do their image based update, then have it automatically apply the prefs from the timemachine mod-integration?
The richest company in the world can't think different?
They know exactly what files were customized in the previous OS-base-image. There’s a reason the whitelist is a whitelist, rather than a blacklist. Just guessing here, but it’s probably something to do with “iteration speed” vs. QA SLAs made to large enterprise customers like IBM.
In my hypothetical, there’s a set of preferences overrides Apple have been forced by contract to guarantee they’ll validate during their QA process, and then allow the OS to retain between updates. For any other file not forced by contract, they don’t bother with that QA process (“takes too long!”), and so default-distrust the ABI-stability of the file, and so don’t let the OS retain it between updates.
Just my opinion here, but I feel like Apple again doesn't really care about power users. 98% of their users won't be making any customizations like this, so they don't care to spend money working on those "edge cases." Their primary mission is to sell devices and apps to average people who aren't tech geeks. And I don't think Apple cares about general purpose computing. I see MacOS getting closer to iOS with every update, and I'm betting that at some point we'll lose filesystem access and sudo access.
Have you ever been FORCED to upgrade/update against your will for a new release whereby you say NO NO NO - then you make the mistake of falling asleep with your phone plugged into the charger to wake to a forced update to your device?
Yeah - fuck apple - and fuck Jonny Ive - they claim to be the masers of all aspects of designs, but really they're they masters of /r/assholedesign
Their hardware is in the top 70th % - but their UX is IMO <25%
(just look at how many clicks you need to do certain tasks, such as bluetooth. They have a slide-up menu to toggle BT and WIFI - but you have to go to desktop->settings->bluetooth->(toggle it on off/refresh)->find the device-> "cant connect" - Toggle BT on both phone and device -> attempt to connect...
But you cant up-swipe hit BT and have it show you the FN menu on screen.
You cant backup and manage all your prefs via icloud - such that you can apply profiles, save profiles, etc from your device to your linked cloud account and say "I always want my privacy to be thus, these are the networks I trust.
Their photos library mgmt is absolute garbage. You have no photo details available to you.
Their albums are garbage.
There are so many interactions that require like 5x more clicks than they should.
Their screens suck.
Their device accessory ecosystem sucks and punishes you for profit with impunity.
They exploit chinese slave labor.
They try to charge you for flaws in the HW provided (recall the balloon battery problem?
I had a macbook pro CATCH FIRE while I was asleep in bed. They said they "recognize that was a safety problem, but because our engineers (after two months of having the machine) determined that at one time the liquid sensor was set off, we cannot replace your machine EVEN THOUGH IT WAS UNDER RECALL FOR THE CLASS OF PROS THAT WERE RECALLED FOR CATCHING FIRE.
That’s a lot of anger and words over something that, in the grand scheme of things, is so utterly unimportant and almost contemptuously irrelevant.
Things are always a trade-off. There are big positives to keeping the ecosystem on a consistent, new and secure version of iOS. Similar positives apply to MacOS.
The problem I have with your argument, is you assume that my frustration is just over a single device from Apple.
I have literally had every single apple product since the Apple ][e -- aside from their server systems.
I have had every iPhone (even had pre-launch phones from them) since launch up until I stopped at the 6s+ which is the only phone I will ever own from them.
I have a history with apple that is not shallow and I have had ~35 years of judgement against them.
I recall getting into a talk with a fellow engineer at Lockheed where I said "Trust me, Apple will switch to intel procs - and this apple boi almost had a heart attack saying that would NEVER happen...
You already have to reboot into the Recovery environment and disable both System Integrity Protection (with csrutil) and OS root-volume signing (with bputil) in order to even (persistently) modify any of the files in /System now.
Malware can't do that, because there's no way for any executable that runs in the regular OS—and isn't signed by Apple—to get anything to automatically happen over in the Recovery OS.
(That's not to say you can't have persistent malware in macOS; just that it can't persist itself into the OS boot volume. It has to persist into the user volume—which is great, because that means the OS can, on boot, mount the user volume noexec and scan it for malware while running in a known-good base state. That's even without needing to boot into the recovery OS.)
So, other than OS updates, basically the only reason these files get modified is when people modify them manually. And the only people doing that are 1. people developing kernel extensions (or their friends, the Hackintosh community); and 2. enterprises burning low-level configuration changes into OS images for image-based deployment.
And both of those cases involve modifying things that are effectively "underneath the OS API abstraction", and therefore don't have the same ABI guarantees that the OS APIs themselves do. Thus the whitelist.
You know =what would be cool: If all apps had to register their pref config files into a single dir and that would be tracked and snapshotted - and then you could just have ALL apps look to the same dir for where their configs come from and you could have a single repo for ALL apps on your or ANY system - and then you could walk up to a terminal and plug in your "license key" which said what apps you had access to and what ones you had configs for and you could just run that app with all your input and prefs and mappings etc...
I actually wrote a white paper on just this in ~2003 or so - and met with several engineers from google and they said it was impossible.
The idea being that you only carried around with you your profile, and you could just come to a dumb terminal, plug in your key, three factor auth - and the terminal would give you access to the apps and resources they had...
This was basically the idea behind the Windows registry - a single configuration store. With mostly the same tree structure on Machine and User level, so your local prefs could override machine-level prefs. The 'user' part was portable between machines on a domain. And you have a single API to access or change settings
Opinions may differ on how well it was executed in practice. I'm not sure /etc/ with its hundreds of different file formats and Ansible or Chefs as an 'API' is that much better
> This was basically the idea behind the Windows registry.
Was it? I got the impression that the original (Windows 3.1) registry was a Windows-internal thing—a store of Windows settings, and a set of APIs to read and modify those Windows settings, e.g. COM/OLE class registrations. (See https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080117-00/?p=23...)
But then, third-party ISVs found the registry, and exploited it to store their own settings. And Microsoft being Microsoft, they accepted that unilateral design change and continued on with it.
Prior to the registry most settings were in files like WIN.INI, and ISVs put settings there. The registry took this idea, added more structure and an API so simultaneous writes don’t screw up.
With the registry, each vendor puts its stuff under a path like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VendorName, even Microsoft.
Yep. The INI files were the original ways to store config info...
The registry was the next step. What would be great is an online serve for such - a machine gets booted and it asks for your config unam UUID etc - and then just slurps your snapshot down.
OK, disclaimer - I am going on over a decade since this happened:
There was a phone that came out (nokia??) that had a docking station and you could have a screen on it and a keyboard attachement etc...
I presented this in ~2004-ish as a white paper... (lost to hundreds of machines since, and poor data mgmt over time)
I met with a few engineers friends from google over this idea and they said they didnt think it was possible (which at the time it was not - even though I wrote about it in 2001) - and then there was that phone that came out which allowed you to have a phone docking station and use it as your primary computer.
This was at the same time whilst I was talking to my buddies at Intel about stacked procs - and they were doing 64 cores in ~2004 in test dies... and they worked.
It was in 1998 when I was at Intel that I asked "Why cant we just stack multiple CPUs on top of eachother?" and was laughed at...
I sat right next to Andy Grove, but I only spent all my time in the DRG Game lab testing games on AMD and Celeron procs to get subjective results on game perf.
Anyway... I posed a lot of things that were laughed at, which then became reality later.
I worked with a MIPS proc eng about Slot-Rack-Servers, in 1995 - this was deemed impossible... later we have HPE based systems... His name was Kent... he was one of the chief MIPS designers...
I was saying "lets make 'slots' that we can install a switch, a server, storage or whatever on the backplane..."
Yes - I am not lying - these were just things I imagined in the early-mid-late 90s....
I had a good career - but I cannot take any credit for these taking production due to I didnt ever implement any of these ideas... aside from expressing them earlier than others who were far more capable of executing.
Its just like IFTT - I literally whiteboarded IFTT for a bunch of engineers from Lockheed a few years before that existed... They have built a lot of what you interact daily with (netflix) among others...
My soul flaw - is that I think of something early, I have no ability to bring it to fruition and even though I have exceptional famous engineers as friends, I cant bring my ideas to market...
and then a few years later - things I designed hit the zeitgeist and hit market...
I have, as a consultant, made people MANY billions of dollars - and havent received anything in return.
The file in question is configuration and should not be part of the update image. (Better yet, Apple should surface this functionality somewhere reasonable, like the System Preferences.)
This is an excellent explanation. One last piece to clarify: there is no way to edit the known-safe list, is there? And/or there is no way to add a script after the update process that copies files like this, correct?
The list itself definitely lives in the OS base-image, so there’s a bit of a catch-22 there. (Imagine if it didn’t! That’d be a bit of an easy loophole for malware authors to exploit!)
I haven’t looked into it specifically, but I’m guessing that like many other basically-static system policy property-lists in macOS, the whitelist lives embedded in a Kernel Extension (kext)—probably the kext responsible for update validation. So you’d have to write your own kext to either replace that extension wholesale, or—hopefully—“inject” over just that element of it.
Of course, to run your own Kernel Extensions these days, you have to run your Mac in bputil --enable-kexts mode, which is “reduced security” from Apple’s perspective (reduced compared to the security model of iOS, they mean.)
On the other hand, the Hackintosh crowd have long agreed that it’s better to just “inject” data into the kernel/OS by either memory-patching the kernel during early boot (Clover), or patching the kernel as it’s being composed into a loadable image (OpenCore), rather than actually modifying anything in /System. (This was before modifying /System was even hard; they just didn’t like making a mess!)
I have a strong feeling that that same community that loves their little quality-of-life kext tweaks so very much, is pretty likely to come out with a way to use OpenCore as the boot-loader on real Apple-Silicon Macs, and thus to overlay arbitrary kexts into macOS without actually reducing macOS’s (OS-stage) security policy at all. (Provided you’re okay with the reduction in security of using a third-party bootloader, that is!)
It may be an unintentional side effect, but doing this may prevent some degree of "Win rot", which Macos (and iOS) has also suffered from to a degree in the past. A huge number of mysterious iOS and Macos problems are caused by an accumulation of issues when config files of various types are "upgraded" along with the OS from one version to the next. If you look at all of the minor and major versions that come out in a year, small issues become large issues after being compounded by a couple of dozen updates.
There was an issue with iOS a few years ago that caused higher than normal battery drain when I was managing a department that supported a lot of iOS devices. A lot of users thought they needed a new battery. The battery drain issue was resolved for 100% of our users by doing an "Erase all data" and NOT restoring the backup. This process will still fix an amazing number of weird iOS issues in 2021, especially issues with the device slowing down, getting hot, or draining battery. It works because you end up with default config files that were designed for that version of the OS. If you restore the backup, often it will "restore" the problem you were trying to fix because the iOS restore process puts some OS config files back.
It will be interesting to see if Macos becomes less susceptible to win-rot type issues because of this config file reset behavior, as annoying as it may seem.
Back in the day I used to tweak my Linux box, win3.1/95, vim, android phone, etc. endlessly.
After awhile they would all become unusable, and I would reinstall everything back to default and try again.
Great for leaning, lousy for day to day work.
Resetting things back to a known state can make life lot easier.
In 10 years I can’t recall needing to reset a Mac.
Debatable and depends on length of time shortcut has been in use. I can type :wq like a madman. My finger can slide straight from w to q, whereas with double-z, I have to pick my finger up and put it back down. So much movement! What next, you want me to run a marathon?
:wq = <move finger of right hand to Shift> <depress Shift> <move finger of left hand to ;> <press-release ;> <release Shift and move finger of left hand and press w and q>
ZZ = <move 2nd finger of left hand to Shift> <depress Shift> <move index finger of left hand to z> <press-release z twice>
As someone with mildly poor dexterity (and I don't touch-type with all my fingers, I mostly use my index fingers), the second approach looks somewhat more interesting to test.
That's all over the place from a touchtype perspective. 2nd finger? That's a pinkie. And you're supposed to use modifier keys from the opposite hand when available.
So it should be <move right pinkie to hold right Shift> <move left pinkie to hit Z twice>.
I honestly didn't know about ZZ, seems very convenient. :wq! on a qwerty forces the pinkie to travel all the way up to the top row, which is hell. On my home keyboard I use a layer for special characters, which helps, but still I guess I'll stick to ZZ from now on.
Interesting, I will add flexibility too, or maybe hand size. I find it slightly uncomfortable to hit shift and Z simultaneously with solely my left hand, so I hit shift with my right and z with my left. Alternatively, I will simultaneously hit shift + colon with my right, and then do the wq slide as mentioned above. Nice that all hands can be accommodated :)
Something weird going on, it still asks for password on the command prompt, if I press just Return key then dialog for touch id opens.. after touching it says `Sorry try again` (my touch id works in other places).
It seems in Big Sur the file you need to edit is not writable. So you need to make it writable first, edit it, and then change permissions back to read-only.
This doesn't seem to be strictly true - the two-line solution worked exactly as expected for me on 11.2.1. I used nano instead of vi (personal preference), but it worked nonetheless.
You can also use this to secure SSHD on servers by delegating to PAM with keyboard-interactive.
I'm waiting for U2F OpenSSH support to trickle down to stable distros but in the meantime pam_yubico is pretty damn good... not to mention you don't have to worry about terminal support since it relies on the yubikey OTP emulating a keyboard.
That's correct, which typically defeats the point of using it since in that case you still have access to Touch ID. The above link works in both scenarios, and can be used as a fallback for pam_tid.
It would be cool if they built it into the touchpad in a future generation. I'm guessing once they can figure out fingerprint through the glass on iPhone they'll do it in the touchpad, too.
I'd have some concerns with this being trigger-able without positive intent to do so if it were in my mouse or trackpad. Having a small interruption can be beneficial for safety.
I've always wondered why they can't just build a fingerprint sensor into a capacitive touchscreen. After all, a fingerprint sensor IS just a really high density capacitive touch sensor right? Or is that not right?
Google gives me no answers and I assumed it was not fundamentally impossible, just that it was two separate companies with two separate production lines making touchscreens and fingerprint sensors so it was hard in practice due to the realities of supply chains.
Many existing fingerprint sensors, like TouchID, were glass, and I wonder why they can't just make it bigger and put an OLED under that glass (even if it was only dense enough for fingerprints at one spot).
Yet here we are, 4 years after the downgrade too FaceID, and still not a single phone in existence with a capacitive fingerprint sensor in the screen.
Maybe that’s better, if you’re using sudo you should probably think a second before you do what you were going to do. I used to enforce the disclaimer coming up every time after I broke a package one too many times.
The fact it is the last key in the first row makes it easy to find by touch without looking at it. Just like regular touch typing, it becomes habitual/muscle memory.
I haven't used a full size keyboard in so long, I had to think about the print reference. I have lost direct placement of Home/Print Screen/End type button locations in my memory. To be more accurate to the keyboard in question, it is a slight extension past the delete key. The only hazard is if you come up short, you might bring up Siri (depending on touchbar mode) which is an even bigger distraction. </pedanticmode>
I'd love for iPhone and Watch to serve as a second-screen touch id for MacOS. Then I can tuck the laptop (or Mini) away, and not have to type passwords into various systems.
I agree using your watch is cool. However I think you lose out on the security aspect, an important element that a fingerprint provides all on the same device.
The watch unlocking mechanism only works if it’s in an unlocked state, i.e. you haven’t taken it off your wrist since the last time you entered your PIN. Somebody would have to double-press the side button on your watch while you were wearing it.
The watch is already used on other parts of the MacOS (anything in System Preferences), I don't think that sudo is much different than allowing kernel extension to run, for example.
Can you clarify what you mean by this? I love the idea of unlocking and running admin stuff with my watch but kinda gave up on the idea because I assumed there would be security implications. After thinking about it a little more, though, I haven't really been able to come up with anything that didn't already require physical access to my machine and some way to authenticate (password or fingerprint). Since you have to authenticate your device to authenticate the watch and it un-authenticates any time it's removed, it seems like you don't lose anything security-wise.
I think it’s not that bad, security wise. Your watch unlocks as soon as it leaves your wrist, and the unlock handshake uses the BT hardware to figure out how close your watch is.
I think this isn’t a great UX for other reasons I posted on this discussion. But the security is acceptable to me.
This made me realize my usage of sudo has gone down quite a bit. It seems like things mostly get permissions right these days, brew and ports were the main culprits back in the day.
I was thinking the same thing. Since I got my MBP16 I think the only times I’ve typed a password at all have been when the Touch ID session expires or whatever it is that requires reauth.
Yes, that is my recommendation as well. It is too late to add that to my comment now, but it is worth mentioning what I said should be a last resource solution.
Interesting, I hacked a small pam module together 4 years ago for the first generation of touch id enabled macbooks[0] and I wonder if pam_tid.so was always present and I just missed it. D'oh!
Every update requires you to redo this. It's so repetitive that I keep a copy of what I want `/etc/sudo` to look like in my homedir and, whenever I get the prompt for a sudo attempt, I instead sudo to cp the file. Then I go on my way with what I was originally intending.has recently sudo'd.
Does anybody know if there's a solution for keychain password copy too? I have a very complicated vpn password that I change often (so I don't remember it), but each day, when connecting to the vpn, I have to open keychain and type my user password to get the vpn password. I couldn't find a way to use touch id for that.
It requires the keychain to be unlocked, which can be handled with touch ID, and you can have it confirm with a "are you sure" dialog box every time.
If you really wanted to be prompted for a fingerprint basically every time, you could probably use a separate keychain that locks after 1 minute of inactivity.
Out of curiousity why do you change a complex password regularly? Is this something your evilCorp policy forces you to do, or something you do out of habit because of something you read on the internet, or even rote habit from something picked up at previous evilCorp policies?
The evilItDepartmentPolicy forces me, but I would do it by my own will (less often) too, if not forced. I have acces on a lot of sensitive places and I don’t want to risk it.
> Since you expect to be be typing in a command line, moving your finger to touch the key is probably not very efficient.
Why is this not very efficient? Isn't moving my finger to touch the key equivalent to a single key stroke? How is a single key stroke less efficient then many key strokes?
Admittedly I've never used Mac's implementation but I could see a slowdown if it takes longer for the fingerprint to register that it takes to type your password (which is probably the fastest combination of characters you can type)
From my experience it's much faster. Just the tiny fraction of a second that it takes me to look at my caps lock key to verify that it's not on takes longer than my fingerprint scan and at that point I haven't even typed a single letter yet :)
Also it's arguably not the fastest combination of characters I can type, because my password is not "test1234" and I don't get much opportunity to type it at all anymore since everything can be unlocked via TouchID except the terminal, or so I thought at least :)
Normally I can type my password faster than pretty much any other activity. But on my MBP (with the terrible keyboard) I never know if all of my keypresses registered (or if some of them were duplicated).
> it takes longer for the fingerprint to register than it takes to type your password
You mean the black void where there’s no feedback on how many characters you typed? I always have to write my password a couple of times to get it right.
What type of work or activity on macOS requires sudo repeatedly enough that it needs to be automated in this way? I mainly need sudo for the occasional dmesg or for adjusting routes after activating my VPN for work.
I just have a setuid root sudo binary (compiled from sudo-touchid: https://github.com/mattrajca/sudo-touchid) in my home folder ~/bin. This has worked a treat across OS updates, without hacking PAM stuff. It’s extremely convenient and has probably saved me cumulative hours in typing out my long password :)
I'm not sure about the "not efficient" part either. My password is 10+ characters, random alphanumeric with special characters. I sometimes mistype it. Whereas I'm yet to make a mistake tapping my finger on the finger print reader.
Touch ID is awesome, but I semi-regularly use the APFS snapshot rollback feature and it erases my finger prints.
Does anyone know why this happens? I was very happy when I found out APFS is CoW but it kind of sucks that restoring an old snapshot apparently erases the secure enclave in my M1 chip.
More than likely because that's a security risk. If it didn't do this, an attacker could likely roll back your machine to before you had Touch ID set up and then roll it forward again to access your data, now without a Touch ID restriction.
The system will notice changes and disable certain features. I noticed my Apple Pay stopped working after a restore and there are additional settings that can turn off Apple Pay. Such as allowing boot from an external drive.
What happens when your Mac has multiple user accounts, some are admins and some are not, but all have Touch ID set up? Would that inadvertently give sudo power to users who shouldn't have it?
For my accounts I usually just allow sudo to work without prompting for password by using the NOPASSWD configuration option. This saves a lot of time if you need to use sudo frequently (in my case I use it for system upgrades).
Unless I'm missing something, the security cost of this should be negligible, especially if you're in the habit of locking your computer screen when you're not using it (and this typically happens by default after a few minutes even if you forget). And if you're relying on the sudo password prompt to protect you against untrusted scripts, I'd argue you have bigger problems.
I'm guessing they meant because malware can now run commands as root without prompting for a password, however I'd argue that if you have malware running as your user in the first place then that will likely be more damaging to you than it getting root and modifying your system, as it will be able to access browser session cookies, personal documents, etc.
Personally I don't have passwordless sudo but I'm also curious as to what the attack vector might be here if you were to enable it.
The virus/malware could change your $PATH or create an alias for some command that normally prompts you for your password (even sudo itself) and trick you into revealing your password to the malware. Maybe even install a keylogger depending on your OS.
Basically, if you have malware running as your own user, I'd be surprised if it couldn't find a way to trick you into typing your password to invoke sudo. Even then, it can probably do quite a bit of damage without sudo.
So then the only scenario a sudo password could possibly save me from is when I have malware already running as my user (and it's unlikely that it would help anyway due to the tricks I just mentioned). Of course everyone should do what they think is best, but personally if I were in this scenario it's pretty much game over anyway, so it's not something I'm going to worry about.
This is correct only in the instance that a biometric is stored on the host.
In TouchID, the biometric is stored only in the secure enclave, and is used to generate a private key signature, which serves as the password.
Additionally, it's always possible to reset TouchID to an unauthenticated state, where it will refuse a fingerprint read until the password is typed in.
There's no sense cargo-culting this bit of conventional wisdom without understanding where it comes from, and what sort of attacks it is meant to prevent.
Technically you are correct and I used to complain about this myself for years. But it seems like at least for consumers they’re often content to have authentication equal authorization so I feel like mostly this battle has been lost in the consumer space.
A password can be stolen by looking over someone's shoulder, a fingerprint can MAYBE be stolen with advanced technology and high-resolution photos of the person's fingers
Yes, it's terrible. Every time I walk through passport control and the person validates my identity through a biometric check by looking at my face and looking at my passport I cringe and tell them that it's terrible and they should instead let me type a password.
What exactly is the point of sudo/UAC these days of single-user machines? I think https://xkcd.com/1200 put it well. Anything running as an unelevated user account can access my browser sessions where it can steal my passwords, emails, other other private info. It can turn on my microphone and camera. It can read all of my documents. Those are the things I care about protecting, not whatever special things root can do like install drivers and create virtual network interfaces.
As the author says, “Since you expect to be be typing in a command line, moving your finger to touch the key is probably not very efficient.”
I was excited to set this up when the first fingerprint sensor macs came out. Within a couple of days I’d switched it off. It is quite inconvenient and especially bad if you use an external keyboard.
It still strikes me as weird that Apple went with Touch ID vs Face ID on the Mac. Computer form factors in general, and particularly notebooks and AIOs, should be perfect for Face ID: the user is always at a good distance, in the right position, looking at it, and as you say will frequently have their hands otherwise occupied actually controlling the system. For that matter a Face ID+iPhone-quality camera thing for Macs that could attach to an external monitor would be a pretty useful value-add, and it would equalize things across all Macs meaning it could be depended on more. It's remained really perplexing that year after year when Apple left Touch ID far behind on iOS they haven't installed Face ID where it'd be even better. I assume this is mainly another one of many symptoms of Apple just not being able to multitask very well and the Mac not really getting that much concerted attention.
> It still strikes me as weird that Apple went with Touch ID vs Face ID on the Mac
BTW the face system is so automatic on the phone that I don't think I'd want it for much beyond login. The flow-breaking reminders when installing apps and the explicit requirement of typing sudo are good ways to require deliberate intent for dependent risks. Login, App Store purchases and the like would be OK by me if controlled by face.
All that being said: the Mac camera remains astonishingly terrible (see a recent HN front pager about how bad webcams are in general). Not just low resolution but poor white balance etc. I am not sure it's been upgraded in the last decade.
There is much speculation as to why (no room in the lid, which is plausible); I feel like for some reason this is an issue on which they simply don't care for some reason as they make a lot of fuss about the changes in speaker and microphone. Perhaps it simply is good enough, based on the innumerable Zoom calls I've been on.
Face ID needs more than a better camera, it also needs an IR channel. I do expect that when they finally do get around to upgrading the camera system they will jump ahead to something like the iphone front facing system.
Not sure how "fooling" comes into play. Only trusted applications can request to use Touch ID/Face ID in the first place. It's not like there's a way for a random application to just say "Scan your face and let me take over your machine"
One point is that the touch prompt is “out of band”: it shows up in its own window. Some other app could open that request while you’re looking elsewhere then yiu type sudo, look up, see it (without focus), so click it and then put your finger on the sensor. When your sudo remains blocked you see the other, click I, and proceed under the assumption it was a glitch.
Sounds complicated but is actually quite plausible. And worse under face I’d as it would be more seamless. iOS is different as the user interface is largely single task (slightly less under ipad) and background tasks that need face ID need a notification and explicit selection to get it
Exploits do happen, and to me it sounds reasonable that a web page gets local unprivileged code execution -> sudo (which is a trusted application) -> my face was already in front of the camera -> root.
I guess this could be circumvented with a "click OK if you agree to get face ID" dialog or similar. Anyway, you need to figure out a way to deal with the "key" always being in the lock if you're using face id on a laptop.
Could say the same thing about iOS, and this is a silly UX complaint anyway. Apple could easily offer or require some purposeful interaction using mouse/keyboard along with Face ID and it'd still be a nicer UX.
I suspect the main reason is that the face-id camera module is too thick and they'd need to increase the thickness of the display casing. If there's on thing the Mac designers will never allow it's a thicker laptop.
Based on iFixit's iPhone 12 teardown and thus the most recent version of the module, I think they might be able to get it into the screen without much compromise. An important consideration here is that it's not just about the Face ID bit, it's about the better camera bit. While it was important even earlier, this past year has made videoconferencing and other remote work rocket up in priorities, and Macs suck pretty badly by modern standards in terms of camera quality. It's a big, by definition both very visible and very social feature (because everyone else in the conference can see how good/bad you look). I think that might be a motivation for Apple that Face ID by itself wouldn't have.
However that aside, thickness concerns don't apply a single bit to the iMac or to a standalone (Mac only) module (or even integration in Apple's ultra fancy display), so that objection doesn't cover the spectrum of Macs.
The current thickness of the MacBook lid (my 16") is <3.5mm, and the faceID module is >3.5mm. Given that you need glass and metal in that 3.5mm as well as the faceID module, you're talking about significantly changing the dimensions of the MacBooks to do this with today's faceID module.
I look forward to the day they do get it fit in there though (hoping that the Silicon redesign allows for it)!
On the other hand, you can't type your fingerprint into a random link that you receive in your email.
I think modern devices that use biometrics to unlock a secret key are different from the old-school case of biometric authentication. If someone is storing a picture of your fingerprint, then of course they can replay that to impersonate you. But that's not what TouchID is doing -- it's just a chip that will only give up the private key if it detects your fingerprint. You have to have physical access to that chip, and a finger analog that will fool the chip into giving up the secret key, and then you can use that key to compromise things. But if you detect that, you just revoke the key, get a new device, and are good to go.
I don't have a great analysis for sudo. You want root on MacOS to do something like install a long-term compromise. Your regular user account already has your GMail session cookie and bank information, so sudo isn't really good for anything else; if you leave your unlocked laptop around somewhere, your Internet life is over. But if someone physically steals your finger so they can gain access to sudo and install a keylogger or something, you already know you're compromised -- your laptop and finger are gone, so you know something's up, defeating the purpose of a long-term compromise.
This attack can't be done remotely; if someone sshs to your laptop and wants to sudo, they can't just take a picture of your fingerprint and upload it... they have to physically touch the sensor on your laptop.
Overall, I think biometrics like TouchID / FaceID / U2F / WebAuthn are strictly better than passwords. They are super convenient. They can be revoked. They can't be phished. That's a huge win over passwords.
How often has your mother given money to someone else who pretended to be you? Because parents identify their children through biometric authentication. They look at you and can in a matter of split seconds verify that you are actually you. Biometric authentication is the oldest and most sophisticated form of authentication. I can enter my work place and nobody asks me to type in a password at the door because the staff can immediately identify my identity by simply validating my face with their own eyes. It's incredible, trust me.
Your mother doesn't view you through a 0.3MP camera in a dimly lit room with no flash when deciding if the person in front of her is her child.
Further, if I take a high resolution photo of you, and then go to your mom and ask for money by presenting her the picture, she won't accept that picture as proof that I am you (although she may suspect I'm blackmailing or otherwise threatening you). This, moreso than qualms about the resolution/quality of the sensor is the GP's point. If the sensors are accurate, that specific set of bits that is translated as your fingerprint will not change. If someone knows those bits, it's extremely likely they can convince the sensor they are you. From our example, once I have your picture, I can tell your mother I'm you--and she'll believe me!
So your qualm is low quality biometric scanning, not biometrics itself? So we agree that biometrics are the most secure form of authentication and we are only debating on the quality of the technology, which we know is getting better day by day, yeah?
> Further, if I take a high resolution photo of you, and then go to your mom and ask for money by presenting her the picture, she won't accept that picture as proof that I am you (although she may suspect I'm blackmailing or otherwise threatening you). This, moreso than qualms about the resolution/quality of the sensor is the GP's point. If the sensors are accurate, that specific set of bits that is translated as your fingerprint will not change. If someone knows those bits, it's extremely likely they can convince the sensor they are you. From our example, once I have your picture, I can tell your mother I'm you--and she'll believe me!
You skipped the second paragraph, so I helpfully requoted it.
Why does the sudo file not persist between updates? This case is quite minor for personal computers, but what about companies that log in with yubikeys or smart cards? Do they have to reconfigure after every update too?