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MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

(sigpipe.macromates.com)
2031 points jrk | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.282s | source
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brendangregg ◴[] No.23277837[source]
Adding network calls to syscalls like exec() is utterly insane. This road can lead to bricked laptops where you can't run anything to fix it (imagine an unexpected network error that the code doesn't handle properly). And crackers will just use ways to overwrite running instruction text to avoid the exec().

The comments on the article are annoying: it good that there's a mini way to reproduce, but please, use some further debugging like tcpdump (it still exists on osx, right?). Last time I summarized osx debugging was https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/analyzing-os-x-syste...

I'd also stress test it: generate scripts in a loop that include random numbers and execute them.

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1. xenadu02 ◴[] No.23303509[source]
That's not quite correct. If network access is unavailable or fails then the exec is allowed. The behavior has been improved over time, putting stricter limits on how long the check is allowed to take before giving up.

The Mac remains a Mac: if you turn off SIP it also disables this behavior. You are free to choose less security for more convenience if that is your preference.