If you want to beef up the security on your Mac with a simple settings adjustment, you can enable the built-in software firewall. This offers a layer of protection by blocking many ports for common protocols, incoming connections, and other potential attack vectors. Generally, the Mac OS X Firewall is not necessary to use for … Read More
Want to find out how to see all startup and login app launches and scripts on a Mac? This article will walk through that process. Gone are the days of Mac OS System 9 where all startup items were sitting nicely in a system folder labeled ‘Startup’, now with the Unix undercore of Mac OS … Read More
You can set Mac OS X to always securely empty the Trash and add a significant layer of security when removing files from the Mac. This is done just by adjusting a preference setting within the Finder, and it’s very easy to configure, here’s what you will want to do to use this option:
Changing the iPhone root password is a good idea if you have Jailbroken your iPhone, it will prevent unauthorized users and applications from doing things you certainly don’t want them to do since the password is universal on all Jailbroken phones (unless it’s changed by the user). And yes in case it was not abundantly … Read More
I just came across a really useful QuickLook plugin called SuspiciousPackage that lets you inspect those .pkg package installer files that so many Mac apps and downloads come in. Using this plugin, you can determine if an admin password is required, how many install scripts are in the package file, where the installation locations of … Read More
Locker is a very simple Dashboard widget that does something Mac OS X should have included by default, it instantly locks your Mac desktop.
Have you ever gotten emails from someone that you really don’t want to get? Be it just plain spam or annoying messages from people you’d rather not hear from, you can reduce this unwanted email by using the Bounce feature of Apple’s Mail app. Bounce tells the message sender that your email address isn’t valid, … Read More
You can reset a lost Administrator (the original account you created) password in Mac OS X by utilizing a Mac OS X installation DVD, here’s how:
Update: Apple has fixed the exploit, the below link is preserved for posterity but no longer works to display anything abnormal. A few weeks ago, there was an active XSS Exploit on Apple.com with their iTunes site. Well, a tipster sent us the exact same cross site scripting exploit found again on the Apple iTunes … Read More
Adobe Flash cookies are not deleted when you remove your browser cookies, because they are stored independent of your browser, meaning Flash cookies from Safari are accessible via Firefox, and vice versa. The interesting thing about Flash cookies though is that they could technically track your web browsing long after you have left the site … Read More
You can securely delete files from Mac OS X right from the Finder. This is by far the simplest method to securely delete something on the Mac, and the process is pretty straight forward, very similar to the normal procedure of deleting a file except that you will access a separate option to enable the … Read More
Update: Apple has fixed the exploit! I imagine this will get fixed relatively quickly, but you can do some funny (and potentially scary) things with Apple.com’s iTunes Affiliate sites just by modifying the URL parameters. The modified Apple.com URL is formed as follows: http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=OSXDaily.com&thumbnailUrl=https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/themes/osxdaily-leftalign/img/osxdailylogo2.jpg&itmsUrl=https://osxdaily.com&albumName=Best+Mac+Blog+Ever Click here for the OSXDaily.com version of the XSS exploit on … Read More
Need to get around the boot level Mac firmware password? You can bypass a firmware password by doing a little bit of a hardware hack. There’s many reasons you’d want to get around firmware protection, but here’s why we got the instructions from an anonymous submitter:
This is a warning to all Snow Leopard users, be aware that a somewhat obscure Snow Leopard bug deletes ALL DATA from a user account, yikes! This will likely NOT effect you, but if you’re a Snow Leopard user you should understand the bug and the consequences. According to CNET: “when logging into the guest … Read More
There are two ways to enable the root super user account in Snow Leopard, the first is probably the quickest. Launch the Terminal and type the following command: sudo passwd root You’ll be asked for the admin password, then you’ll have to set a password for the root account. When you’re finished, the root account … Read More
This is just a quick security tip based on some recent news, a couple Japanese computer scientists have figured out a way to crack WPA TKIP encryption in under a minute. This news came out a few weeks ago but after updating my wireless routers firmware I realized I hadn’t made the encryption type change … Read More
If you really want to lock down your Mac from other users, you can set an Open Firmware (PPC) or EFI (Intel) password that will require a firmware level password immediately upon system boot, prior to Mac OS X being loaded. This is somewhat of an advanced trick and if you accidentally mess something up … Read More
If you ever want to hide a file or folder, you can quickly make it invisible with a command line utility called setfile. This is a really cool tip that should be particularly useful to those who share their mac with other people.
