How Encrypted Binaries Work In Mac OS X 365
An anonymous reader writes "By now we know that OS X uses encrypted binaries for some critical apps like Dock, Finder and LoginWindow. Amit Singh explains the implementation of this protection scheme which makes use of the AES crypto algorithm and a special memory pager in Mach. The so called Do Not Steal Mac OS X (DSMOS) kernel extension helps along the way by decrypting things for the special pager when apps get executed. A funny thing is that if you print the pointer at address 0xFFFF1600 in your own app you get as output Apple's karma poem for crackers! According to the article there are 8 protected binaries in OSX including Rosetta and Spotlight meta data demon. Interestingly Apple's window server is NOT one of those."
It sure was simpler back in the day! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Maci
History repeating!
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One reason not to encrypt the windowing system (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One reason not to encrypt the windowing system (Score:5, Informative)
Originally, developers could inject their own menus into it if they figured out Apple's undocumented API for it. However, Apple shut that down (in 10.2, I think) since an unstable menu would destabilize all of Apple's menus. They're all run in the same address space, presumably to allow Apple to cut some corners in their command-drag reordering system. After 10.2, some developers hacked it to allow them to inject other menus into it. Maybe that's what Apple is trying to stop.
Even so, it's a really odd pick for encryption.
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I suspect the reason is because according to the article all encrypted apps are locked into memory and unswappable. If an attempt somehow manages to be made to page part of one out the system panics. Talk about a major reason NOT to want those versions of the binaries on one's system.....
Notice though how this Apple fan manages to describe all of the details except how to remove the crap. T
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The DSMOS extension, by definition, can't itself be encrypted so why didn't he run dump of it and either extract the key or confirm IntelMacs are using TCPA hardware so the wailing can begin?
Maybe because of this little bit of text which is in both the binary and two copies of a file called LICENSE:
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Ok, I can see how that interpretation can apply, especially after your comment got me to go reread it again. They just discard memory with program text and reload from the binary file later, so no worries about writing unencrypted bits ending up in swap. Of course on the downside it would mean rerunning the decrypt every time. And they probably can't cache the executables in memory i
whoa, people still like Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, I *didn't* know that. I'm not going to "steal" the OS, why is Apple hiding parts of it from me? What else is hiding in there?
Apple seems to be very slowly turning evil again. *sigh*
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[Disclaimer: I was once an Apple employee, but I didn't speak for them back then, and I certainly don't now.]
Typo? (Score:2, Funny)
DSMOS - Do Steal Mac OS?
DRM binaries eliminate competition (Score:3, Interesting)
and would I guess that they are planning to, but letting Apple pull it first, as Apple can get away with it.
Microsoft: "Apple used DRM music first, so locking everyone into our music player with DRM/Encrypted-Music is no worse".
Microsoft: "Apple used DRM binaries first, so locking everyone into our OS and Applications with DRM/Encrypted-Binaries is no worse".
Re: You have it backwards (Score:2)
OS: They have released software that's specifically designed to allow you to run more than one OS on your computer. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a long history of making it damn hard to dual-boot.
Applications: You aren't required to run any of these encrypted apps. Heck, if you don't want them you aren't even required to pay for the operating system - you can download a pretty heavily stripped down ve
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That said, you're probably spot-on.
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duh? (Score:2)
Apparently the pages are actually encrypted (Score:3, Interesting)
So, I'm not sure what this actually accomplishes - I mean, it prevents you from easily disassembling binary, but how does it prevent you from running on non-Apple hardware?
Maybe the key is physically burned on some chip in the hardware?
DSMOS (Score:2, Redundant)
Where is the HOWTO? (Score:2)
Where is the tutorial on how to get our own apps loaded into this special no-pageout protected memory area so that they aren't screwed up by idiots clicking "yes" on a web popup? Every bit of protection helps.
Ethical way to dump Apple's hardware requirements? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about buying a Thinkpad and a Mac mini Core Duo, destroying the mini, and running that licensed copy of OS X on the Thinkpad?
Probably still illegal, but should be on firm ethical ground. Apple got their money, and I'm not running the OS on two machines.
Is this really a "feature"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think Linux does the same thing, although I haven't checked. Somehow, this just feels wrong to me. If it's not a valid binary, and doesn't start with #!, why not just fail? Why keep trying?
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What you see here is obfuscation.
Re:Signed binaries = good, encrypted binaries = ba (Score:2)
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OSX is denying the user one of the fundamental Freedoms. Although it is not the worst offender (*cough microsoft cough*) it is moving in the same direction as Vista. The user is not fully in control of the computer system. There are parts of the computer system about which the user is not permitted to know.
Re:Signed binaries = good, encrypted binaries = ba (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, it might be a "fundamental Freedom" if you had a "fundamental Right" of some sort to do as you wish with other people's IP. Unfortunately, you don't. A significant number of people make a good living for themselves and their families working for companies that, while being very understanding and supportive of the free software movement in its proper place, gain competitive advantage over their peers by employing the best intellectual talent to solve problems with technological solutions that if copied would eliminate any sort of advantage that company may have in solving a certain problem.
Re:Signed binaries = good, encrypted binaries = ba (Score:5, Insightful)
When I purchase a car, the car is my property. Honda is not trampling on my liberties by not giving me all the CAD files and whatnot that were used to make my car.
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Full-quoting because it was inappropriately downmodded (and it saved me having to think enough to type essentially the same thing).
anoncow:What he said. :)
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It's worth pointing out that reverse engineering and disassembling/decompiling are not the same thing. The latter might be useful for helping with the former, but the law doesn't say that anybody is required to make sure reverse engineering will be easy. It just says that that you're allowed to do it for various reasons. Nor do I think anyone has an ethical responsibility to make reverse engineering easy. In fact, if you're looking to reverse engineer something it's p
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Probably. The problem here is that, whether we like it or not, software is sold as a licence rather than as a product. I'd personally expect EULAs to stand up in court simply because there'd be legal and financial pressure upon them to do so; at the moment, they're just "expected" to be valid.
I don't think contracts are going to leave, though. If EULAs are found to be invalid, it'll just change the way that they are distributed to something that's more legally sound, and very little else.
Underhanded? Prob
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What MacOS X does, is try to start the application. If it's encrypted, it's decrypted as part of the load process into memory. If not, well, it's not. I'm certain you can replace OS X's encrypted binaries with unencrypted ones of equivalent functio
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How hard is reverse engineering? (Score:2)
Just wondering. How easy is it to reverse-engineer a massive closed-source piece of software (like, say, MS Windows)?
Such a reverse-engineering job would be of obvious commercial interest (especially to parties who work in countries with lax regulatory regimes), so there is an obvious incentive to do it.
However, my "armchair" estimation is that it is nearly impossible, since there exist parts of the world with large numbers of skill
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Trivial ... just takes time to "re-code" it ... a lot of time ... check out http://www.winehq.com/ [winehq.com] who are in fact reverse engineering Windows.
Why reverse engineer when you can just print copies? There's
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You would never use RE to write a windows clone.. it is, indeed, just too large. Reverse engineering is better used to solve specific tasks.
You could use reverse engineering to find details on things in windows, like codecs, file formats, protocols, etc.
For example, I used reverse engineering to discover the iTMS AES key. It took about an hour to find and step through the relevant code to discover out how it is generated (it's not st
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I'm not interested in re-selling the proprietary solution. I'm interested in selling detailed information about the proprietary solution.
Reverse engineering makes security holes more obvious (does it not? Otherwise, how do hackers find security holes?). This is of obvious interest to "industrial" crackers -- the ones who harness large botnets and sell them to the highest bidder.
why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's easy to make up freedom definitions (Score:2)
I want to be free!" - Frank Zappa, "Teenage Wind"
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If you think it's so easy to do, go ahead and make up better definitions of freedom and submit them to the FSF.
Re:Signed binaries = good, encrypted binaries = ba (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a patent was just filed for this kind of technology.
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Re:Signed binaries = good, encrypted binaries = ba (Score:2)
In short, GNU's #1 freedom may be violated by this in principle ( were it to even apply to this, which it doesn't ), but in practice it's just a silly jump to make.
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Re:Signed binaries = good, encrypted binaries = ba (Score:4, Insightful)
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I know... I shouldn't feed trolls.... Maybe I should have taken offense at the insinuation that all GNU freaks have beards (including the women) instead....
Re:Oh look, we can scramble a binary. (Score:5, Funny)
"And I'm a Mac. My insides are all scrambled up. It protects me from dangerous crackers."
"All scrambled up?"
"Yep, that's right, my most important parts are very heavily scrambled."
"Does it hurt when you poop?"
"like you wouldn't believe"
Re:Oh look, we can scramble a binary. (Score:4, Funny)
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Neither are exactly consumer friendly. Luckily for Apple, they're control over the hardware make the hacking scene very small. Nobody makes a fuss because there are very few who even care. That and the fact that Apple doesn't really depend on software for revenue (not like MS does, at least).
Apple ha
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And if you are not an Apple hardware buyer, then they don't want you as a potential customer anyway.
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It isn't and never has been illegal to run a legally purchased copy of OS X on non-Apple hardware, despite what they would like you to believe. No more than it's illegal to write word processors using Visual Studio, for instance.
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Owning a Mac does not entitle you to run whichever version of Mac OS you like. While there is no technical barrier to running, say, an unlicensed copy of 10.4 on a Mac which came with an earlier version, if you haven't got a license for 10.4 you're still breaking the law.
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That was badly phrased. You have to have a Mac recent enough to run 10.4, of course. It aint gonna work on your Quadra...
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I'm running 10.2.8 - quite old. Printing 0xFFFF1600 as a string with printf causes a seg. fault on my box.
well that's one hell of an Easter egg!
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Same here, version 10.3.9.
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I'm running 10.2.8 - quite old. Printing 0xFFFF1600 as a string with printf causes a seg. fault on my box.
That would probably because this is specific to the Intel version, and Intel wasn't supported before 10.4.x. Even Tiger PPC doesn't have the Don't Steal extension.
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$
Your karma check for today:
There once was was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind,
he'd do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.
Please don't steal Mac OS!
Really, that's way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc.U??VWS?5P
Re:Love mac - hate some of the choices (Score:4, Interesting)
"Critical real estate on the menu bar"? Exactly how big is your Spotlight icon? Mine is less than half the size of my little fingernail on my 12" iBook, as big across as the menu bar is thick. I hardly call that "critical" but if that's your opinion, then so be it.
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"Critical real estate on the menu bar"? Exactly how big is your Spotlight icon? Mine is less than half the size of my little fingernail on my 12" iBook, as big across as the menu bar is thick. I hardly call that "critical" but if that's your opinion, then so be it.
Maybe he's talking about placement. Corners are considered critical because the user can flick the mouse to them without having to get angle or distance right. Although, you can also set your mac to use these "critical" corners for expose, lik
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The grandparent poster is aware of this, and would apparently like to populate it with something that they would utilize more than spotlight. Frankly, I agree, as I tend to key command to spotlight anyhow, then always bring up the window because I want to see the file path, not open the file.
Now, so that you understand why it is infinitely large:
Close your eyes. Move your mouse to the top and right. Give it
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Except that "locate" doesn't index the contents all your files... including Email. That is what makes spotlight powerful. But yeah, it sucks what the indexer starts at really bad times. Like if you plug in a Firewire drive.
-matthew
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Agreed. The NeXTSTEP UI is/was much cleaner than Finder. Given a proper desktop where files and folders could be dragged and dropped, it would have been a winner. Unfortunately, Apple was tied to making OS X look somewhat like OS 9 in order to make the transition easier for the n00bs.
I also can't stand spotlight. It is a resource hog and doesn't work well
Also agreed. Not to mention that Spotlight is a screaming c*nt to get to work with networked directories. It fails if you t
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Re:That poem is scary.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Say Chevy offers Radiohead $1 Million to use one of their recordings in a stupid truck ad, and Radiohead refuses. By your logic, Chevy should then have the right to use the recording anyway, because since Radiohead refused to sell them the song they're not losing any money.
You may think it's right, but hundreds of years of copyright law would disagree.
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Of course now they don't take money at all, so you'll have to get all upset at the Metrocard machine if it refuses to give you change for a 50.
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Not exactly. The promise says they're legal tender for all debts. If you owe the power company $25, then they have to accept a $50 note. But if you haven't bought something yet, there is no debt, and they can simply decide not to sell it to you.
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Re:That poem is scary.. (Score:4, Informative)
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According to the treasury dept you are wrong, the G.P. is correct.
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/lega l-tender.html/ [ustreas.gov]
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They don't always even have to take cash. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm calling shenanigans on this. (Unless you're located in some dollar-using country besides the U.S., in which case I think you're an idiot for not making that more clear, since you had to know it would be assumed.)
The right of a vendor to refuse sale to any person, excepting a few prescribed categories (e.g. racial discrimination) has been long estab
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I don't apologise and get off the bus because he refuses to take my money.
Speaking as a former city bus driver...
...if you do it regularly, I'll request police at your stop, they'll give you a nice fat ticket and tell you to stay off the buses for a year, and you get to experience the warm, friendly comments from all the other passengers whom you've just delayed by 15 minutes.
RTFM. "Exact change only" is in the documentation (timetable, website). For copyright, basics such as this example are covered
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You wouldn't be endorsing it. That's just ridiculous.
If the local Nazi party has a parade and they're driving Ford trucks, does that mean Ford endorses them? If they're wearing clothes from the Gap, does that mean the Gap endorses them? Of course not. They're just using something they bought, and no reasonable person would hold those companies responsible for what someone does with their products.
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Is Apple try to equate "stealing" with getting something that you paid for to work on the hardware you want it to work on?
But dear, if any Joe Bloe is permitted to take existing programs and make them work for himself and others, then who is going to write crippled software and sell it for a lot of money? If you follow this road, you could as well say "good bye" to innovation.
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The recording industry has certainly been using that as the definition of "stealing" for about half a decade now. Of course Apple has been to, but most of their customers are too stupid or brainwashed to notice what's going on.
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Clearly if you buy a copy of MacOS X then it's not "stealing" and you can do whatever you like with it - the fact that Apple equate breaking their artificial OS/Hardware lockin with "stealing" speaks volumes about their corporate culture. I do not think this is enforcable using copyright law, just like most EULAs are not enforceable.
They've internalised the idea of hardware-independent operating systems as being equivalent to piracy. What a huge step backward. Whoever wrote this should consider why Windo
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How is this stealing?
Well, right now, you can't buy a retail copy of OS X with Intel binaries on it. So the only way to get it is from an installer disc included with a new Mac, which was provided specifically for that computer. (it also may not install on any other model without patching, as it is a "restore disc")
Eventually, when 10.5 is released, they'll have to put Intel in a retail box. Then we'll see.
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Simple.
Your morals are crap. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice strawman. Because we all know, any attempt to control my property is equivalent to trying to starve a poor black family.
Your razor blade argument is equally crap. Those blades belong to the store owner. I don't care what you thought, you have no moral or legal right to steal more blades or to force him to give them to you. End of story. Irrefutable.
If you don't like it, shop somewhere else.