Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Unsigned (arm64) binaries don't run at all on M1 Macs, so yes, an ad-hoc certificate provides a better experience ;)


I just tried an unsigned bin on M1 Big Sur and the experience is the same:

it's initially blocked with a "Move to Trash" dialog

but you can go to security prefs and click "allow anyway"

Then try again, click "open" rather than "move to trash" on another warning dialog and the file does get run.

I haven't tried a signed+un-notarized one but it sounds like it'd be similar?


I suspect that the code you're trying to run is ad-hoc signed.


Not by me... and it's my own code build from src in a github action.


When targeting ARM macOS, the linker automatically ad-hoc signs everything it outputs. You can check this by running `codesign -dvv` on the binary. Alternately, if your binary is an Intel binary running under Rosetta, those can be unsigned.


Hmm, it was built on Intel though (GitHub Actions macos runners are only Intel)

But maybe some other part of the toolchain (Gradle, GraalVM native-image) was implicitly ad-hoc signing it


https://eclecticlight.co/2020/08/22/apple-silicon-macs-will-...

"This new policy doesn’t apply to translated x86 binaries running under Rosetta"

...I guess that's why.

The whole situation is so confusing. The article talks about how unsigned code won't run on ARM macs, but an ad hoc cert is fine.

I suppose this fits what others have said in the thread - unsigned native-ARM binaries will be completely blocked. Unsigned x86 binaries can run on ARM macs under Rosetta (what I tried... or possibly my bin was signed by the build tool).

But all these will still get block/warnings from Gatekeeper if un-notarized, which is the part you have to pay for.

This https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/47129 suggests there is yet another factor to consider - the "quarantine" flag. Presumably downloading a tar.gz from github releases via Chrome gets a quarantine flag triggering the Gatekeeper warnings. That Homebrew issue (from 2019 though...) seems to say that "bottles" installed via Homebrew (which is basically the same thing - a precompiled bin downloaded from internet) won't have the quarantine flag set and they just need to be ad-hoc code-signed.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: