A security researcher claims Claude Desktop installed spyware on his Mac. We examine the findings.
  • terabyterex@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2 hours

    This blog is on the malwarebytes website. Mslwarebytes says in thr post thst its not fair to call this spyware. This was brought up kn the windows side as well.

    What is realky going on: claude desktop is installing the hooks for the claude browser extension. If you install the browser extension, claude desktop can control the browser. This is the intended behavior do you can have an agent do something like “in the morning, access these three sites, pull down the data and create a newsletter for me” or “please check flight costs throughput the day on these sites” or whatever you want to access the browser for.

    This is the ehole reason you install claude desktop, to automate your computer.

    • midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1 hour

      The article says that is the intended use, I agree this is just bad implementation, but it’s bad because it not only allows control one way, from the app to the browser, it also allows it the other way: browser extensions with an ID that matches one of the allowed ones can access userspace, without asking. That is a huge attack surface that is installed without any consent.

    • TootGuitar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      15 minutes

      I agree that this doesn’t rise to the level of “spyware,” but it is extra sneaky/slimy, and it absolutely, IMO, makes your system less secure for no good reason. They could just have a prompt in the UI the first time you attempt to use a feature that requires the native messaging host, which says something like “we need to install extra software to communicate with Chrome, OK?” This is the ethical thing to do.

      It’s especially sketchy that they’re preemptively installing it in the right directories for multiple Chromium-based browsers, even ones that aren’t installed on your system.

      • terabyterex@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5 minutes

        Its not sketchy just lazy. One observation i have made eith anthropic is that they are great at amking a model but louzy at app development. There apps tend to have that “scientist learned python to help them at work” vibe. Which is always a security nightmare.

        • TootGuitar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3 minutes

          I disagree, it’s definitely sketchy. Going out of your way to install the messaging host for a half dozen different Chromium forks is going out of your way do something behind the user’s back; it’s the opposite of lazy.

  • Dyskolos@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3 hours

    MacOS already is one big spyware, why would anyone care of another one 😁

    • fartsparkles@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      Honest question; in what way is it spyware and do you have references?

      From everything I’ve ever seen, macOS is more transparent and controllable than Windows or Android.

      I’d still recommend Linux but if I were forced to use a mainstream commercial OS (e.g. for work), I’d pick macOS over anything else except FOSS.

      • Ace@feddit.ukEnglish
        2 hours

        I’m a macos user, and the only thing I’m really aware of is mediaanalysisd. It runs constantly and can’t be turned off, and occasionally it uses 50-100MB of ram but usually it passively uses 500MB-1GB of memory constantly, for seemingly no benefit. There’s no official documentation about what it does, but speculation that I’ve seen is that it’s for analysing your photos so that you can search by faces or by computer vision results, e.g. “car” or “mountain” etc, which would be reasonable. The problem with that theory is that I don’t take photos and I have almost none in my Photos app. So the other explanation is that apple announced a few years ago that they were going to scan people’s devices for known CSAM hashes and report any matches to authorities. So I really REALLY hate the idea that they’re using a 16th of my system memory to constantly scan my files in case they find any csam. That can fuck right off. But there’s no way at all to disable it. I occasionally Force Quit the process in Activity Monitor, but it just comes back within a few minutes.

        But I completely acknowledge that that’s just speculation (although the csam detection thing was certainly announced by apple, they kinda shut up about it after the backlash and seem to have retracted it, certainly on iOS but maybe on macos too). So what is mediaanalysisd actually doing if not that? Nobody seems to really know. Certianly it isn’t using 1GB of ram to do anything that benefits me. e.g. right now it’s using 500MB for a mystery process: https://ibb.co/qfZD1TL

        I’m not at all agreeing with the other user that “macos is spyware”, which is a bit ridiculous. But that particular daemon is a bugbear of mine, so I just took the opportunity to have my little rant lol 😂

      • Dyskolos@lemmy.zipEnglish
        34 minutes

        I wouldn’t say it’s more private or transparent than android or winblows. But even if there’d be zero evidence, which walled garden is private? And especially transparent? Which Apple-service could you use totally 100% anonymous?

        Sure, you CAN restrict mac better and kinda minimize data-harvesting. As long as you also not use all their oh-so-comfortable-services…But who does? The same that use a highly modified winblows that firewall the rest of harvesting off. What about Siri, spotlight, safari, analytics, malware updates, crash reports, and especially: icloud. Or the newer AI-crap?

        And honestly, I’ve never heard a mac-user be concerned for privacy. They prefer simplicity and “it just works!”.

      • asudox@lemmy.asudox.devEnglish
        58 minutes

        All proprietary software is spyware/malware/etc. If you can’t know if it is safe or not, then you have to assume the worst. Especially if it is your operating system.

        You shouldn’t defend it.

        • Dyskolos@lemmy.zipEnglish
          32 minutes

          True that. But it was to be expected that my statement pissed of many mac-lovers :-)

          • fartsparkles@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3 minutes

            I’m not a Mac lover, it’s just the term; Spyware is data gathering in secret without the user’s knowledge. Apple seems to have it all documented and controllable vs say Windows where you can’t turn off telemetry gathering, just set it to “Basic/required”.

            More a semantics thing. I assumed you meant there was something you can’t turn off in Apple shit and it’s done secretly (another commenter has highlighted a daemon that’s doing exactly that!).

            I wasn’t part of the downvote brigade either. I don’t get why people downvote stuff that’s more a point of discussion. You didn’t say anything shocking nor blatantly incorrect.

      • Dyskolos@lemmy.zipEnglish
        31 minutes

        If I would be in there for upvotes, I would’ve said how great MacOS is, and how much i love the apple :-) But thanks, have one back to outweigh the maclovers.