Glyphglyph@mastodon.social
Oct 9, 2026, 7:30 PM@hynek YIKES. that sounds like an EXTREMELY bad bug in macOS itself too, though!
Replies
Oct 10, 2026, 5:35 AM@glyph the output is almost cute; one could think it's a scrappy open source project and not a trillion dollar company talking to me
🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦grumpybozo@toad.socialOct 11, 2026, 3:51 PM@glyph @hynek I suspect that it is a security design choice.
SystemExtensions are typically security-related tools. Installing them requires interactive authentication and authorization. Providing a scriptable tool that could be used by malware to remove them quietly would add attack surface.
There also may be practical problems with removing pieces of the networking stack w/o entirely re-initializing the network state of everything, which users might well not understand or desire.
- Glyphglyph@mastodon.socialOct 11, 2026, 4:59 PM
@grumpybozo @hynek hmm. I suppose there has always been an asymmetry between e.g. loading and unloading kernel modules
- Oct 11, 2026, 5:05 PM
@glyph @grumpybozo the error message literally says “At this time, this tool cannot be used if System Integrity Protection is enabled. This limitation will be removed in the near future.” so I wouldn't peg it as a design choice
- Glyphglyph@mastodon.socialOct 11, 2026, 5:11 PM
@hynek @grumpybozo right and unloading kernel modules does work, this just seems like a plausible intermediary design where adding removal presents a unique and asymmetrical set of challenges
