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Why is it "very important" to change back once the servers are up again? If Apple at some point decides to blacklist users with a custom hosts-file, it means it's time to jump ship and move on to e.g. Linux. It really is that simple.

They also can't deny those without an internet connection to use installed software, that'd be the end of Apple's general computing division. This is even if you disregard personal freedom: some work at remote field sites, others need to follow strict security protocols.

And if I'm not using a Mac - one Apple device less, many of the conveniences with their inter-device connected services gradually go away. These services work as an incentive to make our next "connected device" purchase an Apple one, which is what it's all about for Apple these days.


do whatever you want. just don't come here bitching when you get hit with ransomeware one day.
 
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If you look at the responses you get, the situation is the opposite. I and everyone else responding to you are against "internet verification" of software running locally. How you can interpret that as trying to get "good points from tim" is beyond me. I'm just going to assume you are a bot for feeding some NLP model from now on.
 
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If you look at the responses you get, the situation is the opposite. I and everyone else responding to you are against "internet verification" of software running locally. How you can interpret that as trying to get "good points from tim" is beyond me. I'm just going to assume you are a bot for feeding some NLP model from now on.


you just quoted a different response to a different argument entirely. man, you can't even get that right.
 
I struggled with this yesterday around this time of the day. Three of our machines became extremely slow, nothing opened etc. I thought it was our VPN client, Tunnelblick, because it was freezing everywhere. Disconnecting wi-fi/ethernet indeed solved our problems. It wasn't until 19:30 our time (GMT -3) that things went back to normal. At least now I know WHY that happened. Thanks for the info, MacRumors. :)
 
I struggled with this yesterday around this time of the day. Three of our machines became extremely slow, nothing opened etc. I thought it was our VPN client, Tunnelblick, because it was freezing everywhere. Disconnecting wi-fi/ethernet indeed solved our problems. It wasn't until 19:30 our time (GMT -3) that things went back to normal. At least now I know WHY that happened. Thanks for the info, MacRumors. :)
I’m so glad I didn’t attempt to do a fresh install like some people did!
 
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I though my macbook pro was failing. I actually restored a backup after which things were normal again. People complain about Microsoft phoning home on Windows 10 but thats nothing compared to what macos does.
 
Wow, the world really needs the 'next Apple' to come along and kick Apple right in the hypocritical teeth, over and over again. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Privacy concerns aside (not to trivialize those, because this is awful), Apple seems to have designed for themselves a single point of failure that could potentially bring the entire deployment of Macs worldwide to its knees. OK there are work-arounds, but that's still insanely bad design.
 
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Not trying to hijack the thread, but I'm having problems using Evernote from early this afternoon.

As soon as I try to write, delete or in anyway modify a note, it hangs and tells me the "note failed to update", reloading and throwing away any changes that happened in this 3-7 seconds, returning the note to its previous state.

Maybe if I write really fast, some of the changes (a word or 2) will stick. This started when working on the 3rd of 4 notes I needed to modify.

I'm on a new (bought less than 24 hours ago) MBP 16", on catalina. My wife's iPadPro and my phone do not have this problem. I've just checked and my 2015 13" MBP on Mojave also do not display this behavior.

Also, I haven't been able to install a VM in VMWare Fusion 12 player all day (also freshly downloaded). Could it have something to do with what happened yesterday about OCSP? I'm just about to restore to factory and would really appreciate if I didn't have to.
Screen Shot 2020-11-13 at 19.24.44.png




UPDATE: It seems that the problem was the App Store version of the Evernote app. After several times deleting and reinstalling from the App Store, I gave it a try and downloaded from the web. One problem solved!

Now, even with a new user, and redownloading VMWare Fusion 12 player, it still doesn't work. I think a factory reset is in my near future.
 
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Not trying to hijack the thread, but I'm having problems using Evernote from early this afternoon.

As soon as I try to write, delete or in anyway modify a note, it hangs and tells me the "note failed to update", reloading and throwing away any changes that happened in this 3-7 seconds, returning the note to its previous state.

Maybe if I write really fast, some of the changes (a word or 2) will stick. This started when working on the 3rd of 4 notes I needed to modify.

I'm on a new (bought less than 24 hours ago) MBP 16", on catalina. My wife's iPadPro and my phone do not have this problem. I've just checked and my 2015 13" MBP on Mojave also do not display this behavior.

Also, I haven't been able to install a VM in VMWare Fusion 12 player all day (also freshly downloaded). Could it have something to do with what happened yesterday about OCSP? I'm just about to restore to factory and would really appreciate if I didn't have to

The symptoms I observed on my MBP were that some apps clientside took a while to start up, or the UI would occasionally freeze. I did not see any network connectivity issues where my docs weren’t saving. The issues resolved themselves around 6 PM ET yesterday for me. I was on a 2018 MBP with Catalina
 
When Apple talks privacy, they are full of it--and this OCSP issue proves it: https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
Wow, I had no idea about any of this stuff. I mean, I don’t use iMessages but as of around a year ago, I started using iCloud and luckily backed up my MBA just before the SSD died. The backup finished and maybe within 15 minutes the SSD died. I’m one of those people that’s concerned about privacy but not super super concerned. This iCloud backup saved 5 years worth of invoices and important docs I needed, would’ve been otherwise lost.

I still don’t like where things are heading based on this article, though. Apple makes such a big deal about privacy.
 
PSA to developers: Notarization alone is not enough. You'll need to staple your notarization results as well. That way your user's mac won't need to go online to validate your app for signs of tampering.

How? Have a look here.
So, out of curiosity I just checked some of the apps that wouldn't launch during this incident. AFAIK, the presence of a CodeResources file in the Contents folder of the app bundle indicates that a notarization ticket has been "stapled" to the app. And indeed, several of the apps that were affected on my Mac, e.g. Firefox, appear to have a ticket attached. So it looks like stapling does not prevent Gatekeeper from trying to get the ticket online (and hanging if you have network connectivity but the OSCP server doesn't answer). This was with Mojave. Can anyone confirm?

IMO, Apple really needs to change this. It's unacceptable that a misbehaving server can potentially paralyze millions of computers.
 
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I did not have any issues with Messaging on Catalina; but do now with Big Sur update.
Say what you want; but I'm not imagining things. Before update: no lag, no issues whatsoever... After update: takes a minute or more for the app to even register that I've switched to it.
 
This is almost hilarious. The number of posters that maintain that;
Apple have your privacy at the heart of their ethos and blah blah blah, but............Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon have to die, die, die need to wake up and smell the coffee.
Oh, and while you're drinking said coffee, watch this;
 
This is almost hilarious. The number of posters that maintain that;
Apple have your privacy at the heart of their ethos and blah blah blah, but............Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon have to die, die, die need to wake up and smell the coffee.
Oh, and while you're drinking said coffee, watch this;

Not everything that some random guy on Youtube says is accurate. Read this:


To summarize:
- The Gatekeeper activity that people observed in this case uses the OSCP server to validate the developer certificate, which is unique per developer but not unique per app. It does not send a hash of the application as part of these calls as this guy claims.
- It also does not check the certificate every single time the application is launched, although the expiration time of the check seems to be short (perhaps on the order of hours or a day?).
- This behavior has nothing to do with stapling notarization tickets to the application. The latter affects only the first launch of the application, where Gatekeeps checks for a valid ticket online if none is stapled.
 
Not everything that some random guy on Youtube says is accurate. Read this:


To summarize:
- The Gatekeeper activity that people observed in this case uses the OSCP server to validate the developer certificate, which is unique per developer but not unique per app. It does not send a hash of the application as part of these calls as this guy claims.
- It also does not check the certificate every single time the application is launched, although the expiration time of the check seems to be short (perhaps on the order of hours or a day?).
- This behavior has nothing to do with stapling notarization tickets to the application. The latter affects only the first launch of the application, where Gatekeeps checks for a valid ticket online if none is stapled.
What he does say is enough to question what Apple is doing.
From what I’ve heard, the apps phone home more than once.
 
What he does say is enough to question what Apple is doing.
From what I’ve heard, the apps phone home more than once.
Many applications phone home. But (unless the app is from Apple) this is not Apple's fault, and there isn't much they can do about it. In any case, this certificate check is not the sensational privacy violation that some people claim it is. The more important aspect here is that Apple's flawed implementation paralyzed many people's computers when the server had problems.
 
Many applications phone home. But (unless the app is from Apple) this is not Apple's fault, and there isn't much they can do about it. In any case, this certificate check is not the sensational privacy violation that some people claim it is.
Not usually no. But in a case where said company promotes themselves as a bastion of all that is private, allowing their own apps to bypass a VPN etc isn’t exactly transparent.
 
Not usually no. But in a case where said company promotes themselves as a bastion of all that is private, allowing their own apps to bypass a VPN etc isn’t exactly transparent.
I agree on the transparency. But so far the only information in that regard that I trust (from Partrick Wardle) talked about software firewalls, not VPNs. I'd like to learn more details before jumping to conclusions. I suspect this is simply the result of the architecture of their network stack, not something nefarious.

Software firewalls have always been of dubious value. If an application really wants to, it can easily circumvent these firewalls (e.g. by piggybacking on certain OS services).
 
I agree on the transparency. But so far the only information in that regard that I trust (from Partrick Wardle) talked about software firewalls, not VPNs. I'd like to learn more details before jumping to conclusions. I suspect this is simply the result of the architecture of their network stack, not something nefarious.

Software firewalls have always been of dubious value. If an application really wants to, it can easily circumvent these firewalls (e.g. by piggybacking on certain OS services).
We'll have to wait and see. One thing I know about working in the corporate world is that behind closed doors there are a lot of shysters that will massage things and word things in a way that leaves them an 'out' when they get caught.

I don't believe that Apple are different in this regard. I've worked in their data centres and they aren't the people you think the are. On paper, yes. In practice, no.
 
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We'll have to wait and see. One thing I know about working in the corporate world is that behind closed doors there are a lot of shysters that will massage things and word things in a way that leaves them an 'out' when they get caught.

I don't believe that Apple are different in this regard. I've worked in their data centres and they aren't the people you think the are. On paper, yes. In practice, no.
I do have some confidence that they are serious about privacy. This is not because I think they are particularly good-hearted, but because they have a different business model than the likes of Google, because privacy has marketing value, and because I have seen many instances where they designed their products with privacy in mind, sometimes even to the detriment of functionality (e.g. by doing things on-device that others do in the cloud, using separate IDs that are not tied to your main identity, using sound encryption designs etc.).
 
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