Top all-time · #17167
Mark Rowe
Personal blog · bdash.net.nz/posts · on HN as bdashsystemssecurity
Mark Rowe's personal blog at bdash.net.nz covers systems and security. Since 2024, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 6 times, most often “Sandboxing on macOS”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2024-12-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mark Rowe's blog for introductory explainers on macOS app sandboxing and TCC privacy policy. One commenter describes the linked posts as good introductions to the topic.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal website of Mark Rowe (bdash), a Kiwi software engineer in Lakeport, California
Most-linked posts?
- Sandboxing on macOS3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-10-13
What Hacker News says?
It still compiles the rules down to a very basic bytecode: https://bdash.net.nz/posts/sandboxing-on-macos/#sandbox-poli...
Comment linking /posts/sandboxing-on-macos/
on “TCC and the macOS Platform Sandbox Policy”Submitted TCC and the macOS Platform Sandbox Policy as a story · 66 points
HN discussionSee https://bdash.net.nz/posts/sandboxing-on-macos/ for more details on how sandboxing works on macOS. It touches on how the SBPL Scheme source code is interpreted in userspace to build a bytcode representation of the policy, and the kernel MAC hooks that the Sandbox kernel extension uses for enforcing sandbox policies.
Comment linking /posts/sandboxing-on-macos/
on “macOS's Little-Known Command-Line Sandboxing Tool”Submitted Sandboxing on macOS as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes, afaik macOS apps could theoretically be sandboxed as well (or close to) as iOS apps are. You can find the policies for many first-party apps and deamons in /System/Library/Sandbox/Profiles. But in practice most third-party apps aren't. https://bdash.net.nz/posts/tcc-and-the-platform-sandbox-poli... and https://bdash.net.nz/posts/sandboxing-on-macos/ are good introductory articles.
Comment linking /posts/sandboxing-on-macos/
on “Threat Actors Expand Abuse of Microsoft Visual Studio Code”