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Poke at system files with Shortcuts

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61 pointswallflower24 comments

Looking at the system version is always possible for any third-party app. If you have, say, the Pythonista app[0] for running Python code, running the following is the equivalent:

    with open('/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist', 'rb') as f: print(f.read())

But the apparently builtin plist parsing is a nice touch I'd say.

[0]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pythonista-3/id1085978097?mt...

Neat, I didn't realized Apple started allowing interpreted code in developer tools [1][2]. It's surprising they even allow accessing the filesystem, etc.

1. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/07/apple_relaxes_devel...

2. Aside from the built-in JavaScript engine in WebKit which was always allowed?

Apple has always allowed interpreted code, apart from a brief period in the pre-iOS 4 era. What was new in 2017 was that apps can download that interpreted code on its own, instead of being user input.

It's not surprising at all, if you are in the iOS ecosystem and you are a power user/tinkerer. Pythonista is just one of those apps. IIRC I had quite some fun running Haskell on my iPad about five years ago.

There is a limitation on JIT compiling though which does not apply to the built in JavaScript vm.

It does unless you’re running it in another process as part of a WebKit instance, via WKWebView or SFSafariViewController. Using JavaScript core directly still limits you to interpretation.

This brings back fond memories of being in secondary school (high school), and finding out you could circumvent the rudimentary "student friendly" restrictions of Windows 95/98/2000 by simply creating a shortcut to the C:/ drive on the desktop.

This allowed us access to CMD.exe and, well, it didn't take long for people to find a way to install games

Bypassing your school's computer restrictions in order to play games was a right of passage for the 90s computer nerd.

In 7th grade, I and several of my friends were able to convince our ATP (Academically Talented Pupils) teacher that making and playing multiplayer Marathon maps was a worthy academic undertaking ;)

As was installing Linux on the unused secondary 2GB partition on every lab machine and enabling dual-boot so that you could come into the lab in the evening and launch a real operating system for the night's work and entertainment.

I used to carry a usb stick with knoppix on it

Most of my teachers had no idea what i was doing but actively encouraged it even though it was against most policies.

I'm super grateful for them

that and the schools proxy :)

I remember finding some unquota'd directories on some non-default but open system shares on the school district's NAS and we would put some shooter games on it and play it after school.

I got caught for that eventually and banned from the computers for 6 weeks or so.

Also, one time in elementary school I did a netsend that popped a dialog on every computer in the district :)

My school had the then-new iMacs. Everything locked down so if you double-clicked an application in finder and its four-letter code was not on the whitelist, it wouldn't let you in.

But we had IE for mac installed, and if you made a HTML file linking to any application, IE would happily launch it for you. At which point I downloaded and ran ResEdit ...

We had eMacs, each with an Apple "Mighty" Mouse (yes they really called them that at first). I eventually figured out that you could map anything you wanted to the scroll ball click in the Mouse preferences pane, and it subverted all the restrictions. Ah, the days of naive computer security, now everything is cryptographically signed six ways from Sunday out of necessity.

When I started at university, the IT department had just upgraded a load of classic Mac LCs to PowerMac G4s with 10.2 Jaguar. Clearly they’d never encountered OS X before as they locked down the systems in the most ham-fisted way possible.

It was the work of a moment to get round the restrictions. I felt bad about it, but had to be done as I couldn’t actually do my coursework without.

Similarly, I found a telnet: link would open Terminal, where open -a would open any app ;-)

Heh, my "backdoor" was clicking a broken shortcut in the program files menu, because it prompted you to browse for the executable. Browse to cmd.exe and you're good to go.

In fifth grade, our Windows 2000 box was "locked down" so that all you could do was print documents. Turns out, however, that the printer control interface reachable from the print dialog had a "Select PostScript interpreter" button which would launch the specified executable whenever a page was printed.

Windows 98 you could also bypass Novell NetWare login by clicking 'Help' and then finding a File Open dialog in there

Haha, reminds me of this classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE5PRW-AR7Q

Also, I remember fondly finding a way to break out of my shared drive into the NAS proper, installing a bunch of warez games and having impromptu LAN parties on the school network. What a time to be alive. That shit might get you arrested or at least expelled at my old high school these days.

Reminds me of around 2000-ish when WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was still a thing, I was confined in the some of selected sites from the menu unless I'm on the higher tier. (e.g. you couldn't put in URL to navigate to other sites.)

I remember by going to Yahoo news (which was the one of the sites on the menu), pressing a back button at right timing in some screen, it dropped down to URL entry screen, and could navigate to any sites.

Ahhh yes, getting around blocks on computer usage in middle school was the best.

I got to learn about DNS when I found out that all the blocked game pages were easy to circumvent by typing some weird string of numbers called an IP.

Reminds me of "tourist info" kiosk computers that were installed in our city when I was in high school. It was clearly windows XP based, with a customized locked down browser. Only the city webpage was allowed. It could open PDF files by embedded Adobe Acrobat reader. If I remember correctly, there was a right-click menu that allowed the print dialog to open, where you could select print to file and open an file save dialog. There you could locate cmd.exe or explorer.exe and right-click and open.

That's similar to an old login bypass you used to be able to do on Windows 95. Here's a short gif demonstrating how it worked https://i.imgur.com/rG0p0b2.gif

in my high school we had a bunch of PowerMacs networked up in all the classrooms with user profiles so you could save your work and access it anywhere on campus. I found a "feature" in the version of Office that was installed that let me traverse up through the shares to other students' directories, being able to open and edit(!) their documents. Bit of a glaring hole they eventually fixed by either upgrading Office or phasing out the Macs entirely.

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