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Comment by 1718627440

14 hours ago

> This does mean entering your keyring password a lot.

Not when you put that keyrings password into the user keyring. I think it is also cached by default.

Then what stops the malware accessing the keyring?

  • The security boundary on the OS is the user of the process. If you run the malware under the same user as the key, than yes of course it has access. But in production you don't run software under the same user, and on the developer machine you wouldn't put the production key in the user keychain.

  • On disk, it’s encrypted. The running service, at least on macOS, only hands the item out to specific apps, based on their code signing identity.

    • Who signs an "app" when I download it from Homebrew?

      If all Homebrew "apps" are the same key then accepting a keyring notification on one app is a lost cause at it would allows things vulnerable to RCE to read/write everything?