The Register’s John Leyden notes that security watchers are expressing reservations about whitelisting security that Apple plans to integrate with OS X Mountain Lion this summer with a feature dubbed Gatekeeper that restricts installation of downloaded applications based on their source.
Leyden notes that while from a system security perspective that’s a laudable aim but there may be less palatable consequences, notably that Gatekeeper could be a step along the road to making OS X as closed to unapproved developers as iOS is already, making it, ironically a bit of a Trojan Horse itself in another, more traditional context. To wit, extending the garden wall to surround OS X by stealth.
Leyden cites F-Secure security advisor Sean Sullivan commenting that it’s not much of a reach to imagine revoking third-party peripheral drivers in order to ‘secure’ the Apple user experience on Macs, and observing that while Gatekeeper is being touted as offering: “More control for you,” “I keep reading it as: more control over you. By 2014, I expect somebody out there will be jailbreaking their Mac.”
And apparently Gatekeeper “security” is pretty leaky as well.
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