• Mac Security

    MacForensix

    August 28, 2005

    Ever been hacked? Had information stolen? Who do you turn to? What do you do? No matter what the level, a security breech has occurred and action must be taken to ensure a repeat offense doesn’t happen. The first reaction to a security breech is to isolate it and fix it as soon as possible. However, writing to the systems in any way can cause clues to be overwritten. Therefore it is important to discover the identity of the attacker. The more quickly that forensic analysis is performed the more likely that the attacker, vandal or thief will be apprehended. One of the best places to start in analysis is…

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  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Link Aggregation and Tiger

    August 7, 2005

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Mac OS X 10.4 includes support for link aggregate networking. Link aggregate networking shares network traffic over two or more bonded Ethernet controllers, giving them one IP address for communication. This can allow the servers controllers to run at speeds of 2Gbps. Link aggregation is configured using the Network System Preference Pane. To enable Link Aggregate Networking 1. Open the Network Pane from System Preferences 2. Click the Show: box and select Network Port Configurations 3. Click New 4. In the Name: box enter a name for the new aggregate port 5. In the Port: box select Link Aggregate 6. Places check marks in…

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  • Mac Security

    Password Encryption

    June 18, 2005

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Logging onto most network resources requires the use of a password. Before passwords are sent over networks they are encrypted. Many different variables and algorithms are used to encrypt passwords. The most common method of encrypting passwords before they are sent over a network uses the seconds and minutes fields of file modification time stamps to build variables. The system doesn’t use the time stamp as a variable directly, but uses them to generate hashes. A hash is a number generated from a string of text. The hash is smaller than the text itself and is generated by a formula in such a way…

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  • Business

    Apple's Market Share

    April 8, 2005

    Originally posted at http://www.318.com/TechJournal According to a report by JupiterMedia Corp, Mac OS X is becoming more and more of a standard in the small to Enterprise business categories. The report states that in organizations with 10,000 or more employees, 21% use Mac OS X on their desktops in the office. In businesses with 250 employees or more, 17% of the employees run Mac OS X on their desktop computers at work. Mac OS X is taking market share aware from traditional Linux and Unix installations. One explanation for this is that Mac OS X is easier to use than Linux and Unix, especially for desktop computers. Another explanation is…

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  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Reset the Admin or Root Password in Mac OS X

    February 22, 2005

    Forgot the admin password in Mac OS X? Well, Apple let’s you boot computers into what is known as Single User Mode. To boot a Mac into Single User Mode, boot the machine holding down Command-S. Once the system boots up, you should see a command prompt. Here, run fsck: fsck -fy Then mount the file system: mount -uw / Then reset the password using the passed command passwd <username> For example, if the user is root: passwd root When prompted, provide the desired administrative password.

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  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    vnode

    January 12, 2005

    The vnode table represents all file activity in UNIX. There is a unique vnode allocated in the vnode table for each active file, each current directory, each mounted-on file, text file, and the root.  To see the number of vnodes available in Mac OS X, look to sysctl for the kern.maxvnodes variable using something similar to the following command: sysctl -A | grep vnode

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