How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

I have given Dropbox access to my files, admins rights, and ability to run in the kernel. I'm not freaking out about the Accessibility API.

setuid binaries:

  $ tree -p /Library/DropboxHelperTools/
  /Library/DropboxHelperTools/
  ├── [-r-s--x--x]  DropboxHelperInstaller
  └── [drwxr-xr-x]  Dropbox_u501
      ├── [-r-s--x--x]  dbaccessperm
      ├── [-r-s--x--x]  dbfseventsd
      └── [-r-s--x--x]  dbkextd

kernel extension:

  $ kextstat -b com.getdropbox.dropbox.kext
  Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>
    163    0 0xffffff7f835b5000 0x6000     0x6000     com.getdropbox.dropbox.kext (1.7.5)

Dropbox on Linux needs none of that. Sure it doesn't have the fancy icons in file managers, but it also runs in user-space without a kernel module.

There are plugins that give you the fancy icons for some file managers, and they still run in user-space (and as non-root).