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!
![Designing for Simplicity]()
Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...
![CSS vs. JS Animation: Which is Faster?]()
How is it possible that JavaScript-based animation has secretly always been as fast — or faster — than CSS transitions? And, how is it possible that Adobe and Google consistently release media-rich mobile sites that rival the performance of native apps?
This article serves as a point-by-point...
![CSS Text Overlap]()
One of the important functions of CSS is to position elements.
Margin, padding, top, left, right, bottom, position, and z-index are just a few of the major players in CSS positioning.
By using the above spacing...
![Create a Sexy Persistent Header with Opacity Using MooTools or jQuery]()
I've been working with the Magento eCommerce solution a lot lately and I've taken a liking to a technique they use with the top bar within their administrative control panel. When the user scrolls below a specified threshold, the top bar becomes attached to the...
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/