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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Sure is handy for China how easy it is to get a keylogger installed on someone's computer, isn't it?

I guess I missed your point. In which case it seems you missed my point.

If only approved programs can run on a computer then it is quite easy to disable undesirable programs. There's obviously a kill switch involved. If social unrest gets too great then move Twitter clients to the unapproved list and they all get deleted. This would be a lot easier than installing key loggers and...what? remotely logging into 100 million computers to delete certain programs?

Things like Gatekeeper can in the future be extended and used to exert more control of computing. It may even be a requirement for all manufactured computers as we enter the surveillance state era.

> There's obviously a kill switch involved

False. It's already been reported that this is not the case. Gatekeeper uses, and clears, the quarantine flag, the thing (which already exists) that throws up the "BLAH is an application downloaded from the Internet. Safari downloaded this file today at 4:30PM" message the FIRST time you open an application. Since after the application is launched, the quarantine flag is cleared, you don't get prompted again, and the blacklist is not checked again either. So, whether it's malware, or some kind of "subversive" app the government wants to suppress, no apps that have previously been opened at least once will ever be prevented from running by Gatekeeper. And nobody ever said anything about deleting anything.

Furthermore, even after a developer key was blacklisted, apps loaded from disks such as CDs or USB drives don't get quarantine flag. Only files that came from the network.

I'm pretty sure if China wants a keylogger they just install a custom usb hub chip on the motherboard, repainted to match whatever was specced.

Now that is a deliciously diabolical plot. Infiltrate the hub supplier in Shenzhen, coerce the people that oversee parts deliveries in the appropriate wing of the facilities at Pegatron into not reporting a thing to Apple or other integrator clients, and let the trojan hardware filter into the market. The hubs are inert until they have a driver installed surreptitiously from a compromised copy of Baidu Desktop Search or QQ. No one would be any the wiser.

I'd order a tinfoil hat at this point but I don't know who might have interfered between the aluminum refinery and the sheeting facility.

Infiltrate the hub supplier? The hub supplier is probably already owned by the Chinese army, if my experience with other Chinese companies is correct.

Yes. Unfortunately control of citizens' computing is one area that China leads in. Other national government appear to be envious of this control seek to emulate it.

I think you may be missing tptacek's point. Things like code signing make it harder for bad things to run without the user's permission.

If option 3 is removed then how is this so? It's not in Apple's interest right now to do this. In five years? Maybe China decides that in order to get access to its market Option 3 must not be available. Maybe Gatekeeper gets enhanced in the future.

Obviously this is hypothetical but given the trend toward national surveillance is it hard to imagine that this can happen?

I think he meant how easy it is now for China to install key loggers on, say, American computers.

I don't see how installing key loggers being easy is germane to whether or not enhancing Gatekeeper to delete unapproved programs is a future possibility.

I read the comment as being, "China's key logging exploits are evidence that it likes to control computing and it will seek to enhance this capability." The trend amongst world governments is to seek greater control of computing. I doubt this is going to stop with key logging software and won't be enhanced.

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