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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

This seems so negligent it's difficult for me to believe this was a mistake. Perhaps it could be argued that Apple doesn't want applications blocking the network traffic of trusted applications because there is limited upside to doing so and doing so may restrict core functionality such as system updates, etc. But surely the most reasonable explanation here is that Apple wants a back door to guarantee they can monitor your activity / allow intelligence agencies a way to access to your system?

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No, that is not the most reasonable expectation. Fails both Occam's Razor and the laugh test.

To believe this, one has to believe that a $2 trillion company did this on purpose, knowing it would be revealed within hours and that it would take a major hit on the very reputation for user privacy and security that they have spent years building.

There are a lot of better explanations available than "Apple decided user security can fuck off and that clumsily collaborating with the bad guys in trivially-detectable ways was a way better plan".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25096990

Maybe you're right – I am quite a paranoid person.

I guess I just don't understand how this wasn't flagged as a concern when the feature was being worked on? How is it possible that Apple's engineering team built a backdoor like this without it raising serious security concerns? And if concerns were raised why was this not adequately pen tested prior to release?

I'm not sure what's worse from a reputational perspective... A company that prides itself on privacy but can't get something as basic as a firewall right, or a company that knows how to write secure software but occasionally puts backdoors in them for intelligence agencies?

I've always thought that Apple would do well to have someone on staff to give the things they make the "Hacker News" treatment.

I'd posit that if that were true, they'd probably never have made it to even a $2bn company, never mind $2tn. HN is - for Apple's intents and purposes - an insignificantly tiny bunch of people they're 95% not really interested in as customers.

I volunteer as tribute.

> laugh test.

This seems a little rudely dismissive. GP's skepticism sounds totally reasonable and healthy to me.

Given the history such paranoia might be reasonable(healthy too), but I can't assert such incompetence with a straight face.

Ultimately, there's little difference between incompetence and malevolence when acting in this level. Incompetence might actually be slightly worse.

The malevolent act on their best interest which is often predictable and limited. The incompetent simply give away data to every random badguy under the sun.

> This seems so negligent it's difficult for me to believe this was a mistake.

I mean, it is the result of deliberate architecture and design changes to security and networking on macOS.

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