Would you expect anything less if you bought a car with a remote kill switch which its manufacturer could use to disable it completely? Wouldn’t you demand to know what processes were involved in hitting that kill switch, and what safeguards were in force to ensure that couldn’t happen in error or even maliciously? Then extend that kill switch so the manufacturer could disable not just one car at a time, but tens or even hundreds of thousands. For if we can’t have complete confidence that Apple won’t make such a grave error, then we have lost confidence in Apple as a supplier. The first is to exercise due diligence in wielding that power, and the second is transparency of process to both developers and users. With the enormous power of certificate revocation like this, Apple assumes two further responsibilities.
#Uctox mac software
It hasn’t released any statement to reassure other developers that it’s changing anything which might prevent such as catastrophe from happening again, nor has it explained to the billions who run third-party software on Apple products how it’s going to prevent a recurrence – which could readily prevent any Apple user from using their software on their computer or device. Perhaps Apple didn’t really mean that after all, but just wanted another level of control over your Mac?Īpple has since apologised to Charlie Monroe for its error. When it introduced notarization, one of Apple’s justifications was that it would provide finer control, rather than the huge and heavy-handed kill switch of revoking a certificate and blocking everything signed with that. There’s also the curious question as to why Apple revoked the certificate, rather than pulled one or more of Charlie’s notarizations.
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We all make errors, but allowing any automated process to make this type of decision is guaranteed to cause serious harm to everyone involved, particularly to large numbers of Mac users. What Apple did to Charlie Monroe on 4 August is inexcusable. Or it could happen to far more important apps, with which you prepare accounts or taxes, or earn your living. So it could happen again to someone else, maybe me, and you could suddenly find all my utilities “will damage your computer”. It took almost 24 hours before Apple’s error was rectified, and his certificate and developer account reinstated, as you can read in his account.įrom Apple’s explanation, this all occurred because an automated security checking system made an error, and automatically revoked his developer’s certificate and account, without any human checking whether this was the correct action. You’d have thought that, for such a draconian system, Apple might have a phone number staffed 24/7, but Charlie had to wait until Apple’s convenience in opening for the day. Apple wasn’t even telling all those thousands of users that there was a temporary problem, but that Charlie’s software “will damage your computer”. It was also a nightmare for many thousands who rely on Charlie’s software: note these aren’t entertainment or trivial apps, but tools used by many professionals who need to prepare invoices, track their time so they can bill it to customers, and more. He couldn’t even log into his developer account with Apple, which had also been taken away from him. His software business had vanished with the revocation of his certificate. On 4 August 2020, according to Apple, one of its automated security systems decided that one of Charlie’s developer distribution certificates, which allows all those apps to run on Macs around the world, was bad and revoked it without even informing the developer.įor Charlie Monroe, this was the start of a nightmare, worse perhaps than those around him being struck down overnight by Covid-19. Among the most shocked was the developer of those and other affected apps, Charlie Monroe. What do you do next?Įxactly that happened to many thousands of Mac users last week. Instead of seeing the app open, macOS out of the blue tells you that the app which you’ve been using and trusting “will damage your computer”, and should be moved to the Trash.
Maybe it’s Charlie Monroe’s time tracking app Eon, or you need to do some invoicing with his UctoX. Imagine one day you sit in front of your Mac and open one of your apps.
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