macOS Big Sur 11.2 Beta 2 Removes Feature Letting Apple Apps Bypass Third-Party Firewalls and VPNs
macOS Big Sur 11.2 beta 2, which was released yesterday, eliminates a feature that allowed Apple apps bypass third-party firewalls, security tools, and VPN apps, according to reports from ZDNet and security researcher Patrick Wardle.
macOS Big Sur 11 included a ContentFilterExclusionList that let Apple's apps like the App Store, Maps, iCloud, and more to avoid firewall and VPN apps that users had installed. These apps were not able to filter or inspect traffic for some built-in Apple apps.
Security researchers believed that the feature, found last October, was a major security risk as malware could be designed to latch on to a legitimate Apple app and bypass security software. Users who had VPNs installed also risked exposing their real IP address and location to Apple's apps.
Apple told
ZDNet last year that the list was temporary and the result of a series of bugs related to the deprecation of network kernel extensions in macOS Big Sur. Apple has been addressing those bugs, and in the second beta of macOS Big Sur released yesterday, removed the ContentFilterExclusionList from the macOS code.
When macOS Big Sur 11.2 sees a release, Apple apps will be compatible with VPN apps and will no longer be able to bypass firewalls and other security tools.
Popular Stories
Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories, according to the Apple leaker and prototype collector known as "Kosutami." In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium accessories in the future. Kosutami has revealed...
The lead developer of the multi-emulator app Provenance has told iMore that his team is working towards releasing the app on the App Store, but he did not provide a timeframe. Provenance is a frontend for many existing emulators, and it would allow iPhone and Apple TV users to emulate games released for a wide variety of classic game consoles, including the original PlayStation, SEGA Genesis,...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro, Apple's $3,500 spatial computing device, appears to be following a pattern familiar to the AR/VR headset industry – initial enthusiasm giving way to a significant dip in sustained interest and usage. Since its debut in the U.S. in February 2024, excitement for the Apple Vision Pro has noticeably cooled, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Writing in his latest Power On...
Top Rated Comments
<sigh>
Ha ha that cracks me up!
A security researcher example: they want to observe how an app communicates with the network, how its behavior changes when they limit some of that communication, etc. They weren't able to do that with some of Apple's apps. For example, if App Store or Find My had a security bug related to network communication, they would have a hard time finding out. Not only can they not control the traffic from those services, they can't even see it.
A more general-purpose example: you're on cellular (or some other metered connection), and use an app like Trip Mode to limit data usage. Well, you can't see the data some of Apple's stuff uses. App Store or Software Update download a large update in the background? Trip Mode won't be able to tell you.
There were probably some reasons Apple did all this in the first place (for example, one might argue that macOS needs to be able to download updates to Xprotect malware definitions no matter what), but there's also a fair bit of hubris involved. It feels like once they did decide to make that exemption list, all kinds of software teams internally signed up to be added, and that's just opening the floodgates for trouble.
Anyway, all this, it appears, is now resolved.
What an unfortunate “bug” this mustve been for Apple before it was found ;)