Apple removes certain feature in macOS , bypass its firewall and VPNs

Apple has removed certain features in macOS that allowed 53 of its own apps to bypass third-party firewalls, VPN apps and security tools. The issue was reported by several security researchers and later the developers of the apps realized that their security tools weren’t able to inspect the traffic of these apps nor were able to filter these apps.

The feature known as Content Filter Exclusion List was included in macOS 11 aka Big Sur. The blog says, the list of apps that were able to bypass the security feature included some of the biggest apps like Maps, iCloud and the App Store.

As per ZDNet, security researchers such as Patrick Wardle among others were the first ones to point out this issue and that it was a disaster waiting to happen. The researchers argued that the malware could latch on to legitimate Apple apps present in the list and then bypass the security tools and firewalls easily.

Besides some of the security concerns, users of macOS also ran the risk of exposing their actual IP address and their location when using these apps as VPNs were not able to mask the location of the users due to the malware present in these apps.

The bugs were related to the macOS deprecating kernel extensions and due to the introduction of a new system called Network Extension Framework.