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Reminder: macOS still leaks secrets stored on encrypted drives
Enlarge (credit: Wardle and Regula)
Unbeknownst to many people, a macOS feature that caches thumbnail images of files can leak highly sensitive data stored on password-protected drives and encrypted volumes, security experts said Monday.
The automatically generated caches can be viewed only by someone who has physical access to a Mac or infects the Mac with malware, and the behavior has existed on Macs for almost a decade. Still, the caching is triggered with minimal user interaction and causes there to be a permanent record of files even after the original file is deleted or the USB drive or encrypted volume that stored the data is disconnected from the Mac. Patrick Wardle and Wojciech Reguła, who are macOS security experts at Digita Security and SecuRing, respectively, said for many people, it’s unnecessarily risky to store snapshots of files related to passwords or other sensitive matters in an unprotected folder. In a blog post published Monday, they wrote:
For a forensics investigation or surveillance implant, this information could prove invaluable. Imagine having a historic record of the USB devices, files on the devices, and even thumbnails of the files…all stored persistently in an unencrypted database, long after the USB devices have been removed (and perhaps destroyed).
For users, the question is: “Do you really want your Mac recording the file paths and ‘previews’ thumbnails of the files on any/all USB sticks that you’ve ever inserted into your Mac?” Me thinks not…
As the researchers note, the caching may cause there to be a permanent record of every drive that connects to a Mac. It also creates a thumbnail image that can leak key details about many of the images stored on the drives, as well as password-protected folders or encrypted volumes. The thumbnails will live on in an SQLite database stored indefinitely in the macOS file system.
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French Political Party Voting For Mandatory Copyright Filters Is Furious That Its YouTube Channel Deleted By Filter
It’s been a long tradition here on Techdirt to show examples of politicians and political parties pushing for stricter, more draconian, copyright laws are often found violating those same laws. But the French Rassemblemant National (National Rally Point) party is taking this to new levels — whining about the enforcement of internet filters, just as it’s about to vote in favor of making such filters mandatory. Leaving aside that Rassemblemant National, which is the party headed by Marine Le Pen, is highly controversial, and was formerly known as Front National, it is still an extremely popular political party in France. And, boy, is it ever pissed off that YouTube took down its YouTube channel over automatically generated copyright strikes. Le Pen is particularly angry that YouTube’s automatic filters were unable to recognize that they were just quoting other works:
Marine Le Pen was quoted as saying, “This measure is completely false; we can easily assert a right of quotation [to illustrate why the material was well within the law to broadcast]”.
Yes, but that’s the nature of automated filters. They cannot tell what is “fair use” or what kinds of use are acceptable for commentary or criticism. They can just tell “was this work used?” and if so “take it down.”
Given all that, and the fact that Le Pen complained that this was “arbitrary, political and unilateral,” you have to think that her party is against the EU Copyright Directive proposal, which includes Article 13, which would make such algorithmic filters mandatory. Except… no. Within the EU Parliament, Rassemblemant National is in a coalition with a bunch of other anti-EU parties known as Europe of Nations and Freedoms or ENF. And how does ENF feel about Article 13? MEP Julia Reda has a handy dandy chart showing that ENF is very much in favor of Article 13 (and the Article 11 link tax).
So… we have a major political party in the EU, whose own YouTube channel has been shut down thanks to automated copyright filters in the form of YouTube’s ContentID. And that party is complaining that ContentID, which is the most expensive and the most sophisticated of all the copyright filters out there, was unable to recognize that they were legally “quoting” another work… and their response is to order every other internet platform to install their own filters. Really?
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