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maggit | 2 years ago

"System Integrity Protection (SIP)" seems to be the correct name here, for anyone as confused as me :)

(More details here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102149 )

discuss

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slonopotamus|2 years ago

Original author here. Thanks for spotting the typo, fixed.

WRT security implications of disabling SIP - I don't think OS becomes any less vulnerable than usual Linux/Windows installation.

kafrofrite|2 years ago

> I don't think OS becomes any less vulnerable than usual Linux/Windows installation.

is not a good enough argument.

For the story, SIP is Apple's "rootless". Effectively the OS runs with less privileges than root. Disabling SIP significantly increases the attack surface.

That being said, I'm grateful that someone decided to do something more native for containers in macOS.

highwaylights|2 years ago

This is not necessarily the case.

On Linux, more or less the entire permissions system makes no assumption about SIP existing (as it doesn't there), so other protections are relied upon to secure the system (such as SELinux, granular directory permissions, etc.).

On both Linux and Windows, TPM and secure boot provide similar protections to SIP on macOS, but are optional (it's encouraged more forcefully on Windows 11).

Removing SIP from a system that relies on it as a basis for platform security is different than using a system that wasn't relying on it in the first place.

ayewo|2 years ago

If you really want good adoption, you’ll have to figure out a way for devs to try it out without first having to disable SIP.

Is this related to the code you tried to have merged here: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/8789 ?

hhh|2 years ago

Docker Desktop doesn’t require me to disable SIP. Why would I use this if it requires that?

mbreese|2 years ago

And that’s a good thing? I’m not sure the benefits of containers would be worth disabling SIP.

Maybe for an automated test CI/CD running system (which is probably the main use-case), but not on anything that users would interact with.

totallywrong|2 years ago

> I don't think OS becomes any less vulnerable than usual Linux/Windows installation.

A modern Linux with SELinux enabled (the default in e.g. Fedora) running apps inside rootless containers (Podman doesn’t even need a daemon) is likely much more secure than your default MacOS or Windows.

saagarjha|2 years ago

No, that's not true. Turning off SIP is usually about equivalent to allowing instant escalation to root privileges; sometimes even worse.