• Mac Security

    Get a list of Google Chrome extensions on a Mac (and more on what’s in the manifest.json)

    A common task for those who manage devices is trying to get a list of things installed on a computer. Plenty of the things are apps. But increasingly there are extensions in apps that expand the functionality of those apps. This is nowhere more true than in web browsers, where it’s possible to intercept endpoints and manipulate text on the screen. Google Chrome stores extensions in /Users/<username>/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions. To see a list of all of the extensions in Google Chrome, the following find command can parse through the directory, read the manifest.json, and find the name field. It’s quoted such that it will skip those that also have short_name defined…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security

    Hey, So What’s This Mac App Got Access To?

    Just some one-liners you may find useful… I’ve written about codesign a few times in the past. To see a detailed description of how an app was signed: codesign -dvvvv /Applications/Firefox.app This also gives you the bundleID for further inspection of an app. But there are a number of tools you can use to check out signing and go further into entitlements and sandboxing. You can check the  asctl sandbox check --bundle com.microsoft.outlook The response would be similar to  /Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app: signed with App Sandbox entitlements In the above, we see that Outlook has entitlements to do some stuffs. But where do you see an indication of what it can…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security

    Managing Virus Scans With ClamAV

    There are a number of solutions on the market for scanning a Mac for files that have become infected with a virus or macro-virus. Many of these have a negative return on investment. So customers can instead go the open source route to scan files and quarantine them. And customers can use Jamf Pro to enable doing so. This page is meant to provide a quick and dirty guide to doing so, along with how this might be packaged and potentially tracked with Jamf Pro. First, we’ll install and configure a free tool called clamav. There are a number of ways to install clam. For this example, just to get…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    My El Capitan Enterprise Mac Security Book Now Shipping

    If you’re interested in Mac Security, the next edition of my Enterprise Mac Security book is now shipping. You can get it here http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Mac-Security-OS/dp/148421711X. The book is shipping from 3rd party sellers, but should ship directly from Amazon soon at the regular price. I don’t usually know exactly when, but it should also appear for Kindle and on the Apple Books store as well. Hope you enjoy!

  • Bushel

    Bushel: Secure Your Apple ID With 2 Factor Authentication

    Two-factor verification on your AppleID helps to keep everything nice and secure. Once enabled, you will need any two  of the following to access your iCloud account: The password to your Apple ID, a device trusted in the portal (we’ll trust devices during this process) or a recovery key (which we’ll create during this process). In other words, don’t loose your recovery key! Learn To Enable Two-Factor Verification to Secure your AppleID On The Bushel Blog

  • Active Directory,  Articles and Books,  iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    Holy White Papers, Apple?!?!?

    For those of you who say Apple doesn’t care about the enterprise, Apple has released a number of assets (technical white papers) on integrating Macs (Lion) into enterprise environments at http://training.apple.com/lion. This is also the page that you’ll find links to all of the official training and certification courses for Lion. The assets up on this page are about as close to a publicly accessible book on integrating OS X into the enterprise as you’ll to see for Lion… The first covers the basics of integrating Macs into enterprise environments: The second covers self support: The third is on evaluating Macs in Enterprise environments: The fourth is on deployment: The…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security

    Disable Quarantine

    I recently wrote up an article on some of the new malware safeguards in Snow Leopard. Well, turns out some people want to disable some of it. So you know the prompt that you are downloading an application that then asks you if you want to open it since it’s been quarantined. Well, you can disable it (not that you should but I’ve seen a couple of cases now where I needed to. To do so you’re going to place an LSQuarantine key into the com.apple.LaunchServices.plist. To do so, run: defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO To set it back to normal: defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool YES

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Quick and Dirty md5

    A hashing function is used to calculate a hash value.  If you insert a file into a hashing function then it should produce a value that is almost certain to be unique (there’s always the remote likelihood that no matter how good your function, you may end up with a duplicate).   The openssl command is used to access a number of functions/ciphers including sha1, base64, md5, rc4/rc5 and of course des/des3.  It is a very simple command to use, simply provide the cipher, followed by the path to the file you would like to get a hash value (aka digest) for.  So if I have a file called myfile.txt and I…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Mac OS X: Spoofing MAC Addresses in 5 Seconds

    Every hardware network adapter has a unique MAC address.  However, they’re not always what they seem.  According to Wikipedia: MAC Spoofing is a hacking technique of changing an assigned Media Access Control (MAC) address of a networked device to a different one. The changing of the assigned MAC address may allow the bypassing of access control lists on servers or routers, either hiding a computer on a network or allowing it to impersonate another computer. I was talking to someone the other day about security and the topic of spoofing MAC addresses came up.  They seemed to discount that this was usually a concern except for in super secure environments because they considered it an extremely complex process.  Here’s my answer to…