Comment by tshaddox

4 years ago

That's one potential issue, if you have privacy concerns. But the real problem here is that there's a blatant bug in the phone-home code that causes apps to crash if Apple's servers have a problem.

14 comments

tshaddox

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hungryforcodes  4 years ago

No, I don’t think you should just dismiss the privacy issue. It seems every time I launch an app, MacOS tells Apple. That’s also a REAL problem — and I guess I won’t be buying a Mac again unless the feature can be turned off.

  • lukeholder  4 years ago

    Not every time, just the first time an untrusted app wants to run. And there is no information in it but a hash.

    • jb1991  4 years ago

      Not in this case. This particular thread is about any app that was not an Apple app having problems launching, regardless of how many times have been launched before. It has revealed that actually every opening of any application phones home.

    • hackerfromthefu  4 years ago

      Apple has the db of apps matching the hash.

      What you said is like saying nothing except a social security number is used to identify you, as if that wasn't linked to the rest of the info about you.

akoncius  4 years ago

simply doing “if server does not respond, don’t check anything” would be bigger flaw in design because that would mean just modify hosts file to localhost or something and the security check would be worked around.

  • tshaddox  4 years ago

    But Macs already work fine with no internet connection, and apparently modifying the hosts file does resolve this problem.

  • theonemind  4 years ago

    Doesn't this bigger design flaw you describe apparently exist? I (and many others) did exactly that to get our machines responsive again, ocsp.apple.com 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file.

    I don't understand what you mean.