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macosencryptionosx-yosemitesysctlaes-ni

Temporarily disable AES-NI hw.optional.aes setting via sysctl

For testing reasons I would like to temporarily disable the hw.optional.aes setting on my OS X MacBook (10.10).

Since I couldn't change the value directly via "sysctl -w hw.optional.aes=0" I tried to create a sysctl.conf in /etc/ and wrote the line "hw.optional.aes=0" into the file (owner root, group wheel, 644) to make sure it's read on boot. However it doesn't seem to work that way.

Is there any other way to modify the setting?

Solution

  • this control is read-only. it's value is set according to the capabilities of the CPU installed. for instance, homebrew uses it to adjust compiler flags.

    i am sorry to answer 'no', there is no simple way to disable AES support.

    while AES might be safe to use if implemented correctly i recommend to start using software which binds to libressl instead of openssl - some homebrew formulae (i.e. curl) support a --with-libressl flag today. regards