Category Archives: Authorization

On the new Lion security things

Posted on 2011-07-26 by Graham

This post will take a high-level view of some of Lion’s new security features, and examine how they fit (or don’t) in the general UNIX security model and with that of other platforms. App sandboxing The really big news for … Continue reading →

Posted in Authentication, Authorization, Codesign, Mac, PCAS, sandbox | 4 Comments

On authorization proxy objects

Posted on 2010-07-19 by Graham

Authorization Services is quite a nice way to build in discretionary access controls to a Mac application. There’s a whole chapter in Professional Cocoa Application Security (Chapter 6) dedicated to the topic, if you’re interested in how it works. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Authorization, code-level, Mac, PCAS, software-engineering | Comments Off on On authorization proxy objects

On the extension of code signing

Posted on 2010-06-09 by Graham

One of the public releases Apple has made this WWDC week is that of Safari 5, the latest version of their web browser. Safari 5 is the first version of the software to provide a public extensions API, and there … Continue reading →

Posted in Authorization, Browser, Codesign, Crypto, Mac, Windows | Comments Off on On the extension of code signing

Why OS X (almost) doesn’t need root any more

Posted on 2010-05-12 by Graham

Note: this post was originally written for the Mac Developer Network. In the beginning, there was the super-user. And the super-user was root. When it comes to doling out responsibility for privileged work in an operating system, there are two … Continue reading →

Posted in Authorization, Mac, PCAS | Comments Off on Why OS X (almost) doesn’t need root any more