suryanararayananv

Yes meltdown existed since to launch of x86, but the operating system that you use runs on x86 so yes exploits will always be discovered. T2 Chip is arm based and is completely isolated from macOS, most people who get viruses or malware click on sketchy links on email for hackers to gain access. Those malware links gets executed on the x86 platform not the T2 chip. Hahahahahahahaha.... I live and breath Linux, I hate macOS, the only reason I use macOS is because work from home tools are not so friendly with Linux. And I hate windows even more. I never said the webcam can’t be hacked, I said the webcam can’t be hacked without the light turning on. Yes monitoring your network is much more effective than using a cover.

Im not saying it's isolated, the only way to talk to it is online verification. Obviously there is nothing called absolute. you need physical access to get further. No one managed to do it for the past 15 years. What makes you think they will do it now? let alone distribute it successfully. My job is to deal with facts, you are the one who's not accepting the fact that apple did one thing right. 1. You can't replace SSD's without bricking it 2. You can't install linux without disabling security features 3. iCloud sucks 4. Every browser except safari is much more performance hungry 5. MS office is shit 5. virtualisation is very limited 6. Networking is limited 7. There is no way for you to disable startup applications on one place. 8. They don't give a shit about right to repair 9. Soldered components means zero upgradability 10. No more bootcamp 11. Sometimes randomly System can be extremely unresponsive and requires a restart 12. Tedious process to make an app from an unidentified developer run 13. There are no games 14. Compatibility is total shit, every app needs to update every 2 years or they drop support. 15. Bootcamp drivers absolutely suck 16. They include AMD graphics 17. They become VERY hot. 18. All USB C ports, yikes 19. If you forget your appleid password and Mac password you are screwed 20. Itunes is still the only way to backup your phone. 21. There is no way to hibernate unless you use the command line 22. so much more I can't think of. If you want to hate on apple there's the list but you have to acknowledge the fact that they did one thing right. If you can't accept that you are just blinded by your hate towards apple. At this point, I'm just arguing to haters/fanboys. I won't reply to senseless statements anymore. I did everything I could to explain that the hacking SMC is a fools errand if you can't accept that, believe whatever lie you want, because even if there is a loophole to exploit, it is stupidly complicated to be practical.

XPS lineup has no camera covers/switches.

Im sorry if this is rude but your argument is completely baseless and careless, you don't get to call it a "theory" if its real, I'm a pen tester this is what I do for a living!(I mentioned it on my previous posts). If it wasn't clear, I said the SMC software gets verified through Apple's servers on the SMC. So to update the SMC the current version of software on the SMC verifies if the new version is indeed from apple. So the only means of updating the SMC is guarded by online verification. The SMC has never been hacked before due to this very reason(SMC existed since the intel Macs launched, so they stood the test of time in terms of "hack ability"). JUST...... STOP. your power supply on your pc has a chip to control voltage and prevent short-circuits. Doesn't mean that It can be hacked to cause a fire. Hacking isn't magic, the real world isn't Hollywood, there is only so much you can do remotely, YES you can hack the SMC if you can access the device physically. But remotely? NO.

Are you kidding me? Did u even read the technical explanation I gave earlier? The argument of not yet doesn't apply here, People have been trying to hack the UEFI chips for decades now, some of them have succeeded but those attacks never reached large scale distribution because it requires too much work and motherboard manufactures can patch it on the next bios update within days. This is made impossible by apple because the UEFI chip(FYI apple nerds, apple calls it "SMC") has the ability to connect to the internet, and verify the EFI image, so its literally impossible to execute custom code on the SMC making it fully immune to remote attacks.

Agreed, I should have been more clear. I didn't criticise the hardware switch. I simply stated that the T2 chip is a better solution than a hardware switch. I apologise for phrasing "false sense of security". I should have gone with "comparatively weaker security" but I thought it would feel harsh anyway I digress. The argument here isn't if the camera can be hacked, anything that can be controlled by macOS can be hacked. The question here's can the webcam's light be hacked? The answer is a big fat no. Because the light is controlled by the T2 chip. I didn't quote the person for blaming apple. I was speaking in general, there are a lot of people who think this is apple's design fault. This is just miscommunication. I think you meant to say this based on point 1, but id like to add(if it was not clear on my previous posts) the T2 chip is a hardware addition, the software(macOS) does not control what it does. Like I said, the T2 chip is a better solution than a hardware button because its isolated and gives the same functionality as a physical switch albeit better because of the non chunkiness and clean aesthetic and has no mechanical parts. One shouldn't criticise apple for not including a hardware switch. Some people assume chip = hackable while it's simply not the case. EDIT: grammar corrections and few additional points

Unfortunately there is no straight forward way to make a windows usb from Mac. If you are lucky enough to have a motherboard which has support to boot from an exfat usb drive, just copy the contents of the windows iso to the root directory of the usb drive(make sure your usb is formatted with the exfat file system). If that doesn’t work install virtual box to create a windows virtual machine on your Mac. https://medium.com/oceanize-geeks/install-windows-10-7-on-mac-using-virtualbox-109be82b6037

No Linux distro has similar function to windows. Linux is built to be more stable and fast. It’s not really intuitive to use i.e it has a steep learning curve. If your only concern is to not activate windows, why not use it without activating? You will loose only personalisation features. If u can’t give that up use something like KMS activator(Bear in mind that this is strictly illegal). if you just want to try some distros, I’d say Ubuntu (because of the massive support and user base) or fedora(it has tools for developers pre installed). Just keep in mind that distros don’t really matter that much. If u like a feature on some other distro you can easily install it on your distro 99% of the time.

False sense of security because a webcam hack gives the hacker access to the full system. It’s better to know that you are hacked through the light than turning off the camera and not acknowledging it. To be clear I’m not criticising the physical switch, it’s a lot better than not having a switch at all(in windows laptops). But my point was stuffing a piece of plastic on your laptop to solve a problem that never existed and blaming the company for it is plain stupid. Finally some actual useful argument instead of some “security” bullshit. I prefer using the convenience of software but that’s a personal choice this is the only reason why a physical switch would make sense to anybody(on a Mac anyway).

Read it again. T2 chip removes the risk of spectre, meltdown, reverse meltdown, LVI hijack and JDV along with the webcam hijack with zero performance loss. One may argue that those intel exploits are very rare, but so is web cam hijack on a Mac with the light turned off. Moreover adding a switch is cheap but definitely not “convenient”. Convenient is when the user does not have to worry about the camera. When the light is off the camera is off. Period. You don’t have to check if the switch is off every time you want to have the camera off.

Oh god, what did I stumble upon here? I was researching about antivirus for Mac since I just switched to Mac and I see this thread. I'm a security researcher(pen tester), I seriously feel very bad for apple, they decided not to cheap out on design i.e include a hardware switch which would have costed them a few 1000$(Giving users a false sense of security). Instead they decided to invest millions of dollars on the T2 chip which mitigates the issues of not only webcam but also, spectre, meltdown and thunderbolt 3 attacks. And all you do is complain? To answer your question yes it is theoretically possible(but has never been done yet) to infiltrate the T2 chip to turn off the camera light. But here's the thing, the T2 chip and the intel x_86 chip are not even directly connected(massive oversimplification), both the intel and t2 chips are connected to the UEFI(BIOS) chip. so the infiltrate the T2 chip you need to infiltrate the UEFI chip first. But doing that is almost impossible because the UEFI chip does not execute instructions from the hard drive unless apple releases a EFI partition update, so to trick the UEFI chip to execute a malware is to first spoof apple servers making u think your Mac has an update. Even if u managed to do that, on startup during an update your Mac connects to the internet to "Verify" the image to check if the macOS image is indeed supplied from apple(there is a unique "BundleID" for each update for each user/serial no). Keep in mind that no one has ever managed to do that. But for arguments sake lets say that they did, At this point this becomes a "targeted attack"(the attack can work for you and only you because of the "Verification") meaning that this attack can't be used as an "opportunistic attack"(attacks which can be used for a broad number of people). The way you fall for "targeted attack" is social engineering (someone online pretends to be your friend and sends a link which will look completely normal but is embedded with malware). The reason why I give you this security class is because I wanted you to understand that targeted attacks take massive amount of research and time. Thus they are only used on celebrities and top level government officials. So my point was the webcam light can be spoofed only via targeted attacks(theoretically). If you are indeed targeted your stupid webcam being hacked should be least of your concern(remember social engineering takes weeks of stalking and actual interaction with you) EDIT: Typo

Have you watched any of ltt's other videos? Heres some videos with giveaways. and that does not even include rog rig reboot series. Well maybe before spreading how much ltt has become "thirsty" do some some research on what u post online beforehand. I mean its not even hard to find ltt giveaways. lets see... see? its the top suggestion on google. Please don't spread hate without actual basis or evidence.