Use Touch ID for sudo on Mac
The landscape of security is changing quite a bit. We've gone from basic username and password to 2FA, facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and so on. Hell, my Mac unlocks simply when I have my Apple Watch near by. In the end, I probably use the Mac fingerprint key the most.
One functionality that still requires manually typing a password is using sudo from command line. Did you know, however, that you can instead require the fingerprint key instead of typing out your password?
# Open the sudo utility
sudo vi /etc/pam.d/sudo
# Add the following as the first line
auth sufficient pam_tid.so
Whether or not you'd prefer to type it out or simply use the fingerprint is obviously personal preference. Since you expect to be be typing in a command line, moving your finger to touch the key is probably not very efficient. If you do want to use fingerprint, however, here you go!
![Responsive Images: The Ultimate Guide]()
Chances are that any Web designers using our Ghostlab browser testing app, which allows seamless testing across all devices simultaneously, will have worked with responsive design in some shape or form. And as today's websites and devices become ever more varied, a plethora of responsive images...
![5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed]()
When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It." Can you blame us though? We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...
![Flashy FAQs Using MooTools Sliders]()
I often qualify a great website by one that pay attention to detail and makes all of the "little things" seem as though much time was spent on them. Let's face it -- FAQs are as boring as they come. That is, until you...
![Image Manipulation with PHP and the GD Library]()
Yeah, I'm a Photoshop wizard. I rock the selection tool. I crop like a farmer. I dominate the bucket tool. Hell, I even went as far as wielding the wizard wand selection tool once.
...OK I'm rubbish when it comes to Photoshop.
First you need to make the file writable (it is not by default). And you need to do this after every macOS update, because macOS updates reset the file content.
Nice trick. Unfortunately, on Big Sur, at least, it pops up the touch id alert to use it only when the session is terminated, so it’s not useful.
But it is read-only!
As the co-author of sudo, I am amused :)
No need to make it writable when editing it with vi, you just add a
!to the save and exit command (:wq!) and it will save it corectly – it will even preserve the read only state of the file.Works nicely on Big Sur for me, it pops up the touch id alert, I touch and sudo all the things =)
Is there a way to make sudo work with the Apple Watch as well?
You can also:
*browse to the folder using finder,
*edit the file with vscode, or any other code editor
*save it to desktop
*delete original file
*and place the edited
same with nano you don’t need to make it writable.
You may want to update this for Sonoma – or simple add a pointer to https://0xmachos.com/2023-10-01-Touch-ID-sudo/