Apple’s notarization process fails to protect
In macOS Mojave, Apple introduced the concept of notarization, a process that developers can go through to ensure that their software is malware-free (and must go through for their software to run on macOS Catalina). This is meant to be another layer in Apple’s protection against malware. Unfortunately, it’s starting to look like notarization may be less security and more security theater. What is notarization? Notarization goes hand-in-hand with another security feature: code signing. So let’s talk about that first. Code signing is a cryptographic process that enables a developer to provide authentication to their software. It both verifies who created the software and verifies the integrity of the software. By code signing an app, developers can (to some degree) prevent it from being modified maliciously—or at the very least, make such modifications easily detectable. The code signing process has been integral to Mac software development for years. The user has to jump through h