Thursday, October 17, 2024

Safety Chunk: Apple addresses privateness considerations round Notification Heart database in macOS Sequoia (Replace)

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The privateness implications of Notification Heart popups are well-known within the safety forensics group. Whether or not a consumer likes it or not, macOS briefly retains a log of each notification acquired in a single plaintext database. This could embody messages from functions like iMessage, Slack, Groups, and nearly anything.

Nonetheless, it now seems Apple has moved the Notification Heart database in macOS Sequoia to deal with considerations.

Replace: Csaba Fitzl has shared a straightforward method to view these notifications saved in plaintext from Terminal. This script on GitHub means that you can learn all of the notification information from the database.

A few notes: Earlier than you may run the .sh script, you could must make it executable. Use the next instructions…

cd /path/to/the/script

chmod +x parse_notificationdb_records.sh

./parse_notificationdb_records.sh /path/to/your/com.apple.notificationcenter/db2/db file

If you happen to’re not on the Sequoia beta, you will discover your notificationcenter db path under. After that, the script ought to start to execute and show latest notification particulars.

One in all my iMessage information.

If you’re not utilizing the macOS Sequoia developer beta, you will discover your notifications in an SQLite database situated at /personal/var/folder. To entry this, open Finder, press Shift + CMD + G, after which enter “/var/folder.” Inside, you will notice two folders with random letters as their names. Inside every of those folders, one can find directories containing consumer (0), cache (C), and short-term (T) recordsdata. Click on by the primary two folders, then “0,” and navigate to the com.apple.notificationcenter file. It’s right here you’ll discover the .db file.

Once you double-click to open or run the “strings” command on this file, you’ll uncover a heap of data, together with binary information and “NS” class names, in addition to your iMessages, file paths, Slack, X, Fb, and another notifications despatched to Notification Heart by an app or the system, all seen in plaintext.

If you happen to don’t need to undergo all these steps, you may rapidly discover your final notification from the com.apple.notificationcenter file by punching this command into Terminal:

DA=`getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR`; sqlite3 $DA/com.apple.notificationcenter/db2/db "choose hex(information) from file order by delivered_date desc restrict 1;" | xxd -r -p - | plutil -p -

The excellent news? Apple seems to have lastly acknowledged that storing iMessage information in a folder with out the consumer’s data or consent isn’t the very best observe.

First noticed by safety researcher Csaba Fitzl (often known as “theevilbit” in the neighborhood), macOS Sequoia strikes the Notification Heart database inside Group Containers. Particularly underneath ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.usernoted/db2/db.

Not like in personal/var/folders (the present location), Group Containers are protected by TCC (Transparency, Consent, and Management) prompts. This contains iMessage information, which Apple considers personal info. You’ve seemingly encountered these prompts earlier than. TCC manages permissions associated to numerous assets, comparable to permitting an utility to make use of your Mac’s microphone or digital camera. On this case, it enhances privateness by guaranteeing that delicate message content material isn’t inadvertently uncovered.

This can be a nice step by Apple towards defending consumer privateness, particularly in relation to messages. Higher [4 years] late than by no means.

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