• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Secure Keyboard Entry on macOS

    The Secure Keyboard Entry option has been in Terminal going back almost a decade. Secure Keyboard Entry was added as EnableSecureEventInput way back in Mac OS X 10.3 and was developed to protect the more sensitive inputs people provided, so also made into a public API. It was meant to protect the more sensitive types of data so if we had a login screen with a password field or something else, we’d protect those with it. The purpose was to lock what other processes could use the GetKeys function (once used to write keystroke loggers), tap the IOHIDDeviceInterace and IOHIDOptionsTypeSeizeDevice processes or tap any events that involved any HID system…