Secure Installation of Mac OS X

This is one section of an overall document. The overall publication covers the setup of a Mac OS X Server. This part is being made public to help others secure their machines.

This document outlines some security measures for the Mac OS X Server 1.0 – 1.2 platform. While Mac OS X Server (OSXS) is a fairly secure environment out of the box, these basic measures help create a more secure computing environment. They should be taken by all personnel running a Mac OSXS on the WSU campus network.

The measures outlined …

Mac Data Recovery Macintosh are vulnerable computers too

Macs are Vulnerable, too

Due to the potential vulnerabilities of Mac OS X, Macintosh computer systems are more susceptible to security breaches and threats than ever before. Many Mac users falsely believe that they are immune to virus and hacker attacks. It’s true that Macs are generally affected less by intrusions than PCs, but that’s only because Macintosh makes up such a small percentage of the market. In reality, with the growing number of viruses in existence and the increasing number of hackers on the Internet, there isn’t a computer in …

Sneak Peek of MacAnalysis for Mac OS X – Preview NOW!

Sneak Preview of MacAnalysis for Mac OS X
“Exclusive Previews of MacAnalysis X!”

Lagoon Software’s MacAnalysis has become a manditory program for Macintosh users trying to secure their systems. MacAnalyis is a security auditing suite that runs on your Macintosh, test the security of a local or remote computer system.Read about MacAnalysis @ this SecureMac.com review

After many weeks of programming they are almost ready to start distribution of their Mac OS X version. SecureMac.com was given the program to take a look at – the program follows the same style setup from …

Marketing your Macintosh Security Programs and Applications on the Internet

Marketing your Macintosh Security Programs Online v1.0

Once you have the program created you need people to download, test, and update the software. This simple how to guide is to share with you realms of the Internet where you can reach all different markets, from the hackers, security experts to regular Macintosh users.

Your Web Site

Create a web site the goal is to keep it as clean and simple as possible. Make sure you have pages for the following:

Contact (e-mail address, website – bookmark it, mailing list)
Program (with description, screenshots, and examples)
Index …

Better Safe than Sorry PART 2 – Worms, Viruses and Hackers (Oh My!) – Dr Mac

By Bob LeVitus

…. continued from part 1

Most Macs aren’t affected by the latest parasitic outbreaks in the news (Nimda, Code Red, etc.). But while Mac-specific viruses and worms are rare, the most definitely do still exist. Which is why smart Mac users know if they’re at risk and if they are, they take precautions.

Are you at risk? There are three main groups at risk:
The first is anyone who uses any type of writable or rewritable, mountable media: Disk (floppy, Zip, SuperDisk), cartridge (Jaz, Orb, magneto-optical), burnable optical media (CD-R, CD-RW, …

Startup Security Mac OS and Mac OS X Open Firmware Password Configuration Utility

Information About Startup Security 1.1 for Mac OS 9 & Mac OS X

In case you do not know, your Macintosh may be able to have extra password protection offering you a extra touch of security if you are using Open Firmware 4.1.7 or higher running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X.

What is Open Firmware Password Protection?

We have a whole discussion on Open Firmware Password protection here. In short it would be compared to the PC’s BIOS password where it asks you for password on startup or while trying to …

SKS The Shift Key Suite – Disable Shift Key During Startup

Information

SKS or The Shift Key Suite 1.0.6 is an extension for your Macintosh to stop users from being able to hold down the shift key during startup to disable the extensions.

“Holding down the Shift key while booting your Macintosh prevents all extensions to load – an important feature when you have start-up crashes from incompatible extensions.”

Many Macintosh computers have simple security programs setup that are supposed to keep users out, if you do not see options in the preferences to disable the shift key during startup the user may be …

Firewall Security: The Shareware Method

Broadband Internet technology, with its rapidly increasing availability and affordability, has generated a need to secure personal computers in a way never conceived by its original inventors. Constantly connected PC’s are more prone to malicious attempts by the rising amount of computer hackers and “script kiddies”. To defend ourselves without busting our wallets, several software vendors have stepped up to the plate to offer software-based firewall solutions to protect the average PC user from most attacks prevalent today.

Computers on dedicated connections are more open to Internet-based attacks because they are …

Mac OS X nidump Security Issues (macosx)

What is nidump?

nidump reads the specified NetInfo domain and dumps a por-
tion of its contents to standard output. When a flat-file
administration file format is specified, nidump provides
output using the syntax of the corresponding flat file.
The allowed values for format are aliases, bootparams,
bootptab, exports, fstab, group, hosts, networks, passwd,
printcap, protocols, rpc, and services.

If the -r option is used, the first argument is inter-
preted as a NetInfo directory path, and its contents are
dumped in a generic NetInfo format.

If the -r option is used, the first argument is inter-
preted as a NetInfo directory …

Monitorer – Macintosh KeyStroke Key Logger Log Keystrokes

Information

Monitorer is a extension to record keystrokes as they are typed. Monitorer records everything you type with your keyboard and saves it. That can be very useful if you just wrote a very long text and your computer crashes. After restarting you will find the saved log-file in your preferences folder where you can copy your lost text! This application can also be used to check if any unauthorized person used your computer or you use it to view what your employees “produced” the whole day.

However Keystroke loggers were originally …

Security-Ware – Physical Security for your Macintosh. Keep your Hardware secure

We all realize security is a issue for our computers, but how secure can your password and encrypted files be when your computers have been stolen?

The San Diego, California based company, SecurityWare offers a wide variety of anti theft devices for your Macintosh computers and PC’s. After careful overview of the products we felt the Cable Security kits would be most use full to the general market!

SecurityWare’s iBook/iMac kits (with or without plate) makes it possible and affordable to secure your Mac. SecureMac travels from locations and our iBooks sometimes …

Disabling Single User Boot Mode for Mac OS X

Marukka, a programmer at MSEC (Macintosh Security Group) has created a modified version of the mach_init that will make it so Mac OS X does not have the ability to boot into single user mode.

The MSEC single-user patch disables the ability to boot into single-user mode under OS X. If this patch is not applied then anyone with physical access to the Mac OS X machine can gain root access easily by holding down the command and s keys at startup.

However, if you are not worried about someone having console …