OSX 10.6.8 security

Is OSX 10.6.8 vulnerable to recent security problems as reported in New York Times (Feb 24, 2014?)?

If kept up-to-date it should be fine.
However have you considered upgrading the Mavericks? This of course assumes your machine has the ability to do so. The longer you stay on an older version of OS X the more difficult it will be to migrate when you finally are ready. I would recommend making plans and begin enacting them now to so that when you are ready the migration will be seamless. This may included updating your legacy apps which can be expensive but the longer you wait the more difficult it will be be.

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OSX Server VPN L2TP secure?

i am using osx server v2.21 (169) and using the L2TP with shared key VPN to connect my iphone to my home server, and browse through my home internet connection...
i have read numerous articles on the internet, and some here on the apple support communities that say L2TP VPN on OSX Server is not secure....
is that really the case?
thanks

There is no perfect security. Ever.   A sufficiently determined attacker can and will succeed against anything you can do, given that sooner or later somebody involved will make an opsec mistake somewhere. Or the existing attacks against MD5, RC4 and SSL/TLS security — attacks including BEAST, CRIME Lucky 13, etc — will continue to be "weaponized".
Firewalls and VPNs only get you so far, and it's common for attackers to use a variety of attacks to try to breach those; to bypass the network security. So-called "spearphishing" tries to get somebody on the network to breach security for the attacker. The best VPN and the best firewall are worth nothing if you have Java lit in your web browser and the Java JVM sandbox gets breached (again), or if you receive and open a document that contains malware, for instance.
Facebook and other entities were recently breached using what was known as a watering hole attack, and that was only spotted based on detecting "odd" out-bound network traffic. The attack got around the firewalls and the VPNs and the rest of the security, and was active on the organizations' internal networks.
If you're securing nuclear secrets or large sums of money or exceedingly embarassing or sensitive data, then you definitely and certainly do need to focus on this stuff, and you're going to be spending time and effort and money on making your organization harder (emphasis on harder) to attack. But attacks will continue.
If you're dealing with a home network or a typical a small business network, then you just don't want to be the lowest of the low-hanging fruit around, and you want to avoid opsec mistakes such as open ports or weak passwords, and you don't want to give the good folks of the Internet reasons to attack you.   You want to be not worth attacking, or not as "fun" and not as valuable to attack.
Even if your security is not attacked, a DDoS can still ruin your day.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I much prefer using a VPN server in a gateway-firewall-router device — as VPNs and NAT don't mix very well — and I do use private certificate authority chains.    But in terms of attacks? Keep your software and your security current, review your logs and your rules, DMZ any services you provide to "outside", maintain and verify backups — those backups can be your recovery path from a breach — and start looking at "odd" or "unexpected" outbound traffic, too. VPNs are just part of avoiding the mess of a cleanup.

Reinstalling OSX tiger--erasing disk--security setting?

I have a 12" powerbook G4 and I had read in another topic to choose to write zeroes to the disk. should I do that, and should it take an absolute eternity?

It's only recommended when preparing a new drive or changing the drive format from another platform such as Windows or replacing another operating system such as Linux. And, yes, writing zeroes may take hours depending upon the drive size. Only one pass is needed, however.
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Installed new security patch problem

Yesterday installed the latest OSX 10.5.8 security patch and now all incoming mail is being rejected with 550 - no such user, etc. Erased users and re-entered them still no joy. Any help/ideas appreciated. Bruce

deggie wrote:
Because of the security bug that it patches.
So they should update to iOS 7.0.6.
It's the customer's choice to update or not update. If they want the security patch, they update. If they don't, then they don't.
Only the customer can decide what is more important to them; retaining iOS 6 on their device or improving the security of the device.
The only 'rock & hard place' are because of their personal choices.
Oldhippie, only YOU can decide that. IMHO, security is more important than aesthetics. But you need to be comofrtable with the decision, and no one here can help with that.

Osx firewall vs ipfw

Hello:
Could someone please explain how the OSX firewall and the ipfw rules play together or point me to an article about it?
First of all, the man ipfw states that ipfw is deprecated.
What I am trying to understand is related to this post: http://www.petefreitag.com/item/753.cfm
The Cisco AnyConnect VPN client alters the firewall rules via IPFW commands and if split-tunneling has not been configured on the vpn server, it blocks all the access to the outside world . The blog suggests that the line that denies the traffic in the ipfw list should be removed in order to free the traffic. Would this leave the computer vulnerable? What about the OSX firewall (accessible through -> Security & Privacy -> FireWall) ? I don't understand how these two pieces fit together at OS level...
Thanks

There's really no immediate need for anti-virus software on the Mac since there are no extant viruses affecting OS X. As for the firewall if you have a hardware router as part of your local network then there's little need for firewall protection beyond what is provided in OS X or by your router.
My suggestion is that your computer will have fewer potential problems if you uninstall the Norton software.

Since 10.9.2 I can no longer backup my 3gs via iTunes

Since upgrading to 10.9.2 I suddenly discovered that I can no longer backup or sync my 3Gs to iTunes. Variously:
1- I suddenly keep gettting -- iPhone is locked messages cannot backup - never had them before
2- I cannot re-arrange apps and then update the iPhone
3- I see strange messages flash by about downloading various music even though I have not touched the music on the iPhone in months
There are probably other symptoms, but those are the ones I recall.

The article is quite interesting. Quite a Mea Culpa from Apple!
Translated, the article says -- if you get any of these errors, iTunes and/or IOS have corrupted your device to the point where it cannot be recovered. You must reinitialize (i.e. restore from backup) your device. -- excetp that the first step "Copy your backup" is less than informative or useful.
Under OSX, the mentioned location contains nothing but a bunch of files named with a string of digits.
Yes, I know what they represent and how to translate them -- howver, I pitty joe-user with no experience with OSX.
The bulk of the article is for Windows systems. Very little information in that article applies to OSX.
The funny, but sad, thing is the first thing they tell you to do is to update OSX and iTunes and security software -- when in fact that is what cause the problem in the first place. Granted the articles pre-date the OSX/iTunes updates which caused the problem.
However, all of that blather ignored -- the article does NOT address my problem.
Unless it really does.
I have no issues (apparently) with successfully backing up my iPhone. At least iTunes claims that it is being successful.
What is failing is the second half -- the Sync.
OF course, that is if you belive iTunes -- which, according to the /Library/Logs/MobilBackup/MobilBackup.log, has in fact NOT happened now since January!
Very interesting.
Thanks for your suggestion.
However, I continue to hunt.

Is it possible to make a partition in Windows 7 and then place OS X on that partition?

My employer just gave me a new MBP 13" with Windows 7 on it. It has bootcamp running, but no option to boot in Mac OS. IT dept. said they deleted Mac OSX Lion due to security concerns (?). In any case, as I travel quite a bit and have and ipad and iphone, I would like to use Mac OSX for personal use and Windows 7 for work.
Is it possible to make a partition in Windows 7 and then place Mac OSX Lion on the partition so that I do not need to reinstall Windows? I know it would be possible to wipe the HDD and then add Mac OS, then bootcamp, then Windows 7, but adding again would get my IT dept involved which would put me back to square one.
Any help would be appreciated!!
JF

Ok let me ask you IF the IT department of your workplace does NOT want OS X installed on "THEIR" (The Companies) computers because of what they think is some type of security issue why are you trying to go against their wishes and install OS X on a computer that is NOT owned by you.
That could cost you your job.
If you continue down this path you will screw up the Windows install and have to take the system back to the IT department to get it fixed. What do you think they will say at that point?
Do as you like but you would be better off just buying your own Mac computer if you are set on using OS X as your personal operating system.

Cant Download ANYTHING !! HELP !!

I can surf the web etc but cannot download anything ! It just does nothing when I try.
Other PC connected to same router works fine...
How do I reset OS X etc etc ???
Any ideas on this much appreciated...

if you can get online, run all software updates.
make sure to get all OSX updates, Java, and security updates.
go to the apple.com site, and click on the Quicktime tab. see if you can view any movie trailers.
another trouble shooting step would be to have a direct connection to the modem.
are you connected wirelessly or by ethernet?
has it worked before? when did it stop? what browser are you using? have you tried another browser?
if you are using Safari. Click on the word Safari in the upper right, and choose Reset Safari.
you can create a new user on the computer , and see if the issue persists in the new user. if it does not persist, then you can isolate the issue to a preference file or .plist
if it is a .plist then you can locate the corresponding file in ~/library/preferences ( ~ indicates your home folder ) take com.apple.safari.plist and drag it to the trash, then restart. see if issue persists .
if the issue does persist in a new user, then the issue is system wide and could be the application itself or an OS issue. you can try removing and reinstalling the application, or archiving and installing the OS .
with more information, we can get more specific

Library issue with flash catalyst

I've taken the suggestion of of a work around the fact that in Flash Catlyst you can't export libraries by making root files read and write with this terminal command:
So this is todo with it wanting to write a file in / ( or c:\ ) for some reason. Probably should be using $TEMP (%TEMP)
anyway to fix on a mac OSX and decrease your security from any virus / stupid typo on a command line..
sudo chmod a+rwx /
or for those octal fan
sudo chmod 0777 /
How can I get back to the default state? I'm running Lion.

Hi Bear,
Thanks for the email i have tried to do the whole clipping thing i can see how it would work in certain scenarios but when i did it, it took away all my interactions etc.
I did the toggle thing which did work for the images but not the writing.
My artboard is 900 wide so i moved my wrting all the way over to 1200 on the right to get it off the screen. my main problem is now when i put into dreamweaver html and play looks fine, but when i upload to internet i have all that extra room on the right and a little on the bottom.
One thing that confuses me is that i have images on the left and they dont show up at all the artboard only extends to the right and a little on the bottom out of the artboard specified size.
help kathy

Why updates keep failing since 10.9.2 to 10.9.4 (blank screen)?

I'm IT manager with 60+ Apple computers (mostly iMac and laptops) all running Mavericks and since 10.9.2, the automatic system updates keep failing on a few of my computers (10-12 computers out of 60). Users launch the system updates when they leave office by the night and when they come back next morning, login screen is black and there's only a moving cursor! No matter if you reboot, safe boot, verbose or EVEN reinstall OS (I tried it once), it's still the black login screen.
This problem is highly discussed on the web and there's an easy fix to force update to continue and succeed... but as IT manger I am very tired to fix manually several computer every time Apple release a system update!! For people who's wondering, the fix is to power off computer, restart in safe mode (shift key), then type your admin account, hit TAB and type your password within the black screen then after a few try the display will light up and update will continue and succeed after a final reboot.
I am just wondering why updates keeps failing since 10.9.2, also in 10.9.3 and still in 10.9.4... it's not happening on specific Mac model/year and my computers are not "ghosted" (restored) from disk image on each other... there's no link between the computers who's failing and those who succeed to update!! They are in different department of the business and they are not having same software installed. Few are for office work (Ms-Office) and other are graphic design (Adobe) or video. Almost all users are non-admin but a few are admin and both admins and non-admins are failing!
If you have some hints for me, I'll be very appreciated since I lost so much time to manually relaunching the update. Thx!!

The article is quite interesting. Quite a Mea Culpa from Apple!
Translated, the article says -- if you get any of these errors, iTunes and/or IOS have corrupted your device to the point where it cannot be recovered. You must reinitialize (i.e. restore from backup) your device. -- excetp that the first step "Copy your backup" is less than informative or useful.
Under OSX, the mentioned location contains nothing but a bunch of files named with a string of digits.
Yes, I know what they represent and how to translate them -- howver, I pitty joe-user with no experience with OSX.
The bulk of the article is for Windows systems. Very little information in that article applies to OSX.
The funny, but sad, thing is the first thing they tell you to do is to update OSX and iTunes and security software -- when in fact that is what cause the problem in the first place. Granted the articles pre-date the OSX/iTunes updates which caused the problem.
However, all of that blather ignored -- the article does NOT address my problem.
Unless it really does.
I have no issues (apparently) with successfully backing up my iPhone. At least iTunes claims that it is being successful.
What is failing is the second half -- the Sync.
OF course, that is if you belive iTunes -- which, according to the /Library/Logs/MobilBackup/MobilBackup.log, has in fact NOT happened now since January!
Very interesting.
Thanks for your suggestion.
However, I continue to hunt.

Fix classic apple drop down menu

In classic, I use the "apple menu" folder that appears in the drop down menu for Classic that is in the OS X menu (that 9 that appears if you click "show classic status in menu) in the systems preferences (OSX). This item has disappeared a couple of times when I do some OSX updates or apple security downloads. Might have gone on a verify permissions. Not sure what makes it disappear, but the fix is easy. Turns out that the memory for the classic apple menu items was reset to default of 128, and that created problem. Fix involves remembering how classic worked. Need to open the control panels FOLDER; then click on menu options and hit get information (command I). When it is open, increase the 128 to 258 or whatever, and the "apple menu" folder reappears in classic drop down menu next time you restart.

When OS 9 was used as a primary operating system, the Apple Menu Options control panel was always prone to having its preferences spontaneously and mysteriously corrupted, and at boot time Conflict Catcher often alerted me that AMO was using more memory at startup than it had requested — which might have been the cause of the corruption. I eventually found that the remedy was to allocate a lot more Preferred memory to AMO than the default setting of 128K — especially if one had lots of items and aliases of large folders in the Apple menu. I eventually set mine at 4000K, and my problems with the AMO prefs file and the CC notices at startup went away for good. It's something of a surprise to me that the same misbehavior continues even when OS 9 is only run as Classic within OS X, but your post suggests that it does, John. Good catch!

Can't connect to HSBC website

This is weird but I can't connect to the www.hsbc.com.au website on my mac – I get an error that says "Safari can't open the page because because Safari can't connect to the server hsbc.com.au"
- I am running OSX Leopard 10.6.8 and Safari 5.1.2
- I have no firewall or antivirus
- All other websites are working on the mac
- I CAN open the site from other computers in the house
- It doesn't seem to be a Safari issue as the site won't open in internet explorer through Parallels either
- The problems seem to have started when I turned on the firewall and installed Avast but I have deleted Avast and turned the firewall off with no success
Any suggestions guys?

Hi Everyone,
My connection with HSBC was fine, then I played with the OSX firewall and it became intermittant and finally became unaccessable.
I tried a few things that didn't work, but here are some things that did:
- Run through a proxy: System Preferences>Network>Advanced>Proxies and added my proxy under Web Proxy (HTTP) and Secure Web Proxy (HTTPS). My ISP provided me with their proxy, and it shouldn't be hard to find yours.
Not happy with using the proxy I kept going and the latest solution (with proxies disabled) is to go to the OSX firewall: System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Firewall turn it on (you may need to click the lock button to make changes), the go into Firewall Options hit the + sign and navigate to, select, and click 'Add' for your web browser and make sure it says 'Allow incoming connections'.
So far so good...
OSX 10.8.2
no java
Google Chrome

Which Anti Virus?

Hi,
Any thoughts on an Anti Virus program for an iBook? (running 10.2.8) - obviously there is norton but is there anything written for Apple?
Also do Macs suffer from spyware - or is this a pc thing?
Many thanks
JC

From what I can gather there is no real need for anti-virus software for apples. We have seen in the past few weeks that OSX is not completely secure, but until apple has many more users it is pretty worthless for people to write viruses for Macs.
If you are dead set on putting an Anti Virus software on your computer I have heard stories of Norton actually hirting the performance of Macs.
My school offers Sophos protection for macs, but I believe they only offer protection to large scale users such as schools and busineses.

After updating latest security update for my OSX 10.7.5 one of my usb port is not working now.how do i know what is cause that usb port is not working after security update

one of usb port in my macbook pro havent work after i ve updated latest security update for osx 10.7.5, how do i know what is cause that usb port is good or bad

On a Mac running v10.7.2, the only way to reinstall Safari is to reinstall OS X using OS X Recovery.
Safari 5.1.1 is for Snow Leopard. It will not run on a Mac with v10.7 installed.

My 2011 Macbook Pro OSX 10.8.4 latest update won't connect to secured Wi-fi

2011 Macbook Pro
OSX 10.8.4 latest updates
Suddenly stopped connecting to any wireless network which is secured, WEP/WPA/WPA2/personal/enterprise all do NOT work.
Connects to unsecured networks just fine.
For example, our wireless password is:
123456890!
I tried with WPA2, no luck.
Tried with WPA2 and pw 1234567890, no luck.
Tried with WPA and pw 1234567890!, no luck.
Tried with WPA and pw 1234567890, no luck.
Tried WEP with 1234567890, no luck.
Tried with NO SECURITY on this wi-fi network, connected right away.
-I did reset PRAM, no luck.
-I deleted from Keychain, no luck.
-I added as prefered network and removed, no luck.
-I added new network location, no luck.
-I removed the Wi-fi network adapter, rebooted, activated, no luck.
-In the mac console logs, all I see are "wlEvent: en1 en1 link DOWN" when I try to connect to my secured wireless network (home or my office or even at a neighbors).
-Wireless diagnostics tell me nothing
-Console logs do not tell me anything
-Warranty is expired and no AppleCare
Seems like a bug to me, even though I have tried with a Netgear, Cisco/Linksys, D-Link router and even tried tethering to a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and iPhone 5, all same problem, says "Connection failed."
APPLE FRIENDS HELP ME PLEASE!

For example, our wireless password is: 123456890!
Well a password that weak will get cracked in about 6 hours on just about any PC in the area.
Now: LKUY*&T&67NH(*JKÎM<PijriuÎÓyhm8t, that's a real good network password, even a huge botnet would have trouble cracking that. I know because my router was PING flooded by the Flashback botnet and survived.
After OS X is reinstalled over itself to fix it, you might have to do more as it could be a "in user account" issue with a corrupted preference file, bad users permissions or another cause that's not OS X
..Step by Step to fix your Mac

OSX 10.6.8 security

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