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Understanding Mac OS X Kernel

Posted by timothy on from the deep-in-the-heart-of-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Kernelthread.com has published a flash presentation overview of the Mac OS X kernel. Its title is 'A Tour of the Mac OS X Kernel' and it also covers Tiger features. Maybe interesting to note is that the slides are from a talk given to the NSA. Well, there is a nice security architecture diagram towards the end of the presentation."

9 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Re:AES encryption under the hood? by zhiwenchong · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apparently not:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES#Security

  2. Eek, a presentation in flash! by Psychic+Burrito · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is no way to step back (at least I found none), to get an overview, to jump to a certain frame (like the mentioned security architecture diagram) - why do people make presentations in flash, instead of pdf or css (example)?

  3. Keynote by TimmyDee · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm willing to bet it's in Flash because he did the presentation in Keynote. While the SWF export in Keynote isn't great, at least it preserves transitions, fonts, and other formatting options and doesn't look like shit (like the HTML export of another presentation software).

    Plus, it takes one step to export. I haven't seen anything that will do that with CSS.

    --
    Per Square Mile, a blog about density
  4. Re:AES encryption under the hood? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    FS and swap encryption is used to encrypt user's home directories. This is the "File Vault" functionality of OS X. Tiger adds the ability to optionally encrypt the users swap space also (only on file vaulted home folders) to secure the users memory space as well. A file vaulted home folder becomes a sparse disk image file (a disk image that can grow in size as it's written too) that uses the users account password to open. If the user losses their account password then the admin can use the master file vault (set separately) to restore the users home directory. That scenario only really applies for multi-user systems.

    I am not sure what bit of AES is used though. I would guess 128 bit at least.

  5. Re:* Encrypted swap (optional, uses AES) by kerry-buckley · · Score: 5, Informative
    Wow.. So it looks like they finally fixed this security bug where the password could be discovered in the swap. Anyone know how to turn this feature on?
    There's a "use secure virtual memory" checkbox in the security preference pane.
  6. Re:So, HFS+ can be case-sensitive... by ahknight · · Score: 3, Informative

    Like this: http://www.codepoetry.net/archives/2003/10/26/case sensitive_hfs_for_the_masses.php

  7. Re:So, HFS+ can be case-sensitive... by macshome · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just use diskutil on 10.3 or Disk Utility in the GUI on 10.4. Josh

  8. Re:NSA deciding how to break into Mac computers? by noewun · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry to dint your tinfoil body suit, but the reason the NSA is interested in OS X is because they use OS X. I have a very interesting, very thorough PDF authored by the NSA (report #I331-009R-2004) on how to secure an OS X box, from install through end use. Very interesting, and I learned a bit.

    --
    I am a believer of momentum and curves.
  9. Re:NSA deciding how to break into Mac computers? by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 2, Informative

    The NSA is not allowed to break US laws. Of course, they spy on other countries, so they're probably allowed to break other countries' laws.

    As for the other nasty stuff, it sounds an awful lot like your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

    Also, if you want to hack a computer, you probably care more about the services running on it than the guts of the kernel, at least up to the point where you install a rootkit. They probably care more because they want to use MacOS X in a highly secure environment. SEDarwin anyone?

    --
    I hereby place the above post in the public domain.