Contribute
Register

Apple Special Event Scheduled for October 30th

Status
Not open for further replies.
It also occurred to me that they have the technical knowledge to simply put a block on us converting PCs to their OS.
Well, of course they could. Nintendo has shown it with, for example, the 3DS machines: they include a crypto key in hardware that can not be changed. You need that brick of silicon to run any software, as it needs to be decrypted. If I remember correctly, it took the -- rather small and unfunded -- hacking community about three years to recover the keys, and that was only the case because we could not run our own software anyways. As long as we can recompile and swap the kernel we can just dump the entire RAM making any encryption pointless, albeit that any decryption stuff would have to be patched out of the kernel. And on-the-fly kernel patches are already a thing :) Without aggressive inlining of the decryption routine the patch would be very small too.

Also, I think it wouldn't be long until such a chip would be decapped and it's key published. There are a few guys out there who would love such a challenge. Like this fella here.

Anything other than encryption is trivially bypassable. I'll let you guess what FakeSMC.kext is for. The worst thing that could happen is if they start to move more things to the secure enclave, but we won't see that until all supported macs have one. And even then we could probably just emulate it. Less secure, but on most hacks it does not matter anyways. My TPM on my laptop is already disabled because I tinkered with my firmware to be able to swap my wifi card (thanks Lenovo). So no secure boot for me.

I would worry more about Hollywood lobbying firms that want manufacturers to enable secure boot permanently, without the possibility to install user certificates or disabling that thing. Clover will never ever be signed by e.g. the Microsoft EFI signing program.
 
Well, of course they could. Nintendo has shown it with, for example, the 3DS machines: they include a crypto key in hardware that can not be changed. You need that brick of silicon to run any software, as it needs to be decrypted. If I remember correctly, it took the -- rather small and unfunded -- hacking community about three years to recover the keys, and that was only the case because we could not run our own software anyways. As long as we can recompile and swap the kernel we can just dump the entire RAM making any encryption pointless, albeit that any decryption stuff would have to be patched out of the kernel. And on-the-fly kernel patches are already a thing :) Without aggressive inlining of the decryption routine the patch would be very small too.

Also, I think it wouldn't be long until such a chip would be decapped and it's key published. There are a few guys out there who would love such a challenge. Like this fella here.

Anything other than encryption is trivially bypassable. I'll let you guess what FakeSMC.kext is for. The worst thing that could happen is if they start to move more things to the secure enclave, but we won't see that until all supported macs have one. And even then we could probably just emulate it. Less secure, but on most hacks it does not matter anyways. My TPM on my laptop is already disabled because I tinkered with my firmware to be able to swap my wifi card (thanks Lenovo). So no secure boot for me.

I would worry more about Hollywood lobbying firms that want manufacturers to enable secure boot permanently, without the possibility to install user certificates or disabling that thing. Clover will never ever be signed by e.g. the Microsoft EFI signing program.

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for explaining. :)

I know there are brains behind the scenes who work incredibly hard to make the Hackintosh a possibility, but I have, perhaps incorrectly, got the impression that Apple hasn't actively been trying to foil us. Maybe they have and it's just down to clever programmers that we can keep going ...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
New MacBook Air with 8th Gen Intel chip !! 8GB of ram, starts at $1199 with a Retina display :clap:

Screen Shot 9.jpg
 
Mac mini with 8th Gen 6 core CPUs. 64 Gigs memory :headbang: It's not a Mac Wimpy anymore !

Screen Shot 11.jpg
 
Mac mini with 8th Gen 6 core CPUs. 64 Gigs memory :headbang: It's not a Mac Wimpy anymore !

Desktop CPU based MacMini with 4 TB ports is actually a great product. For us this is great news as it means a bunch more years of Intel hackintoshing still ahead.
 
Desktop CPU based MacMini with 4 TB ports is actually a great product. For us this is great news as it means a bunch more years of Intel hackintoshing still ahead.
I didn't expect an A12X chip in these but I'm very happy these have 8th gen desktop chips.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top