Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Mac Command Line: Turning Apps into Commands

I moved to MacOS X because it offers both a unix command line and graphical interfaces, and I almost exclusively use the command line as I switch between tasks. If you use a terminal and aren’t familiar with the open command, I urge you to take a look. I tend to open documents with open […]

 

When an interrupt is important

So it’s cool that this “S.M.A.R.T” stuff tells the computer when the hard drive is failing. The next step in user interface is to take the message out of /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and into an interruptive UI, so that I don’t discover this problem when I happen to get an extra drive for backup. I know […]

 

Nothing to add

(I saw this here, would appreciate the right attribution.)

 

Is iTunes 10.3.1 a security update?

Dear Apple, In the software update, you tell us that we should see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 for the security content of this update: However, on visiting http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222, and searching for “10.3”, the phrase doesn’t appear. Does that imply that there’s no security content? Does it mean there is security content but you’re not telling us about it? […]

 

Let’s Fix Paste!

Okay, this is a rant. Cut and paste is broken in most apps today. More specifically, it is paste that is broken. There are two choices in just about every application: “Paste” and “Paste correctly.” Sometimes the latter one is labeled “Paste and Match Style” (Apple) and sometimes “Paste Special” (Microsoft). However, they have it […]

 

Jonathan Ive's Sharia Style

I was on a business commuter flight the other day, which was also the maiden voyage of my MacBook Air. I had it out before takeoff. This was an international flight and I was in bulkhead. On international flights, they’re not as strict about not having your laptop on your lap during takeoff. This flight […]

 
 

If It feels so wrong, how can it be so right?

Emacs users get addicted to the standard key bindings (which are also available in Cocoa apps). Microsoft Word doesn’t support these by default, but you can add them through customization. Here are the ones I find most useful: StartOfLine: Control-A EndOfLine: Control-E To set these up in Word… …you’ll have to read “Add emacs key […]

 

Small Bits of Chaos

Michael Giest is covering Canadian Parliamentary hearings over that country’s privacy law in “PIPEDA Hearings – Day 01 (Industry Canada)” “PIPEDA Hearings – Day 02 (B.C. Privacy Experts)” Bakelblog vents about the petty tyranny of immigration bureaucrats in “Welcome to America, Fuckwads!” Alec Muffet has interesting and detailed comments about the broken security of the […]

 

Use The Logo Luke

“Decaf” over on DeadBeefCafe, relates the story of a colleague whose response to yet another virus outbreak is to convince management to purchase Macintoshes, with the following justification: We’re going to buy Mac Minis and run Windows on them because Macs aren’t affected by these security problems. Decaf breaks down the several fallacies of this […]

 

On The Curious Incident Lately in Apple v. Maynor and Ellch

So John Gruber, who has written quite a bit on the whole did-they-didn’t-they spat between Apple and Dave Maynor and Jon Ellch, offers up “An Open Challenge to David Maynor and Jon Ellch,” offering them a Macbook if they can root it. I’d like to mention something that hasn’t happened lately. By not happening, it […]

 

Macintosh Genuine Advantageā„¢

See “Mac OS X Server Firewall Serial Hole:” …What they haven’t noticed yet is Mac OS X Server 10.4 overrides an explicit administrator firewall security setting to keep its copy protection functional. OSXS 10.4’s “Server Admin” lists “Serial Number Support” on UDP port 626 under its firewall pane, with an option to turn it off. […]

 

DaveG On Apple Security Advisory

So if you have a Mac, you really want to open software update now. You can read about Apple Security Update 2006-0003 after you’ve installed it and the Quicktime patch. In “Apple Security Update RoundUp,” DaveG explains: So, in short, without the latest update, OS X is secure as long as you don’t look at […]

 

Apple’s Message

Over at Security Curve, Ed Moyle has some good thoughts on “the Gigantic ‘Bull’s Eye’ on Apple’s Forehead:” Now, I don’t know about you but I haven’t seen this kind of hubris since Oracle’s “unbreakable” campaign. Remember that? I do. I remember that at one point in time, most researchers ignored Oracle and pretty much […]

 

Time to Patch

Brian Krebs has a long article, “Time To Patch III: Apple,” examining how long it takes Apple to ship security fixes: Over the past several months, Security Fix published data showing how long it took Microsoft and Mozilla to issue updates for security flaws. Today, I’d like to present some data I compiled that looks […]

 

I’m Sure I Don’t Want to Continue

When I try to drop files in the Trash, the Finder gives me this awful[1] dialog box. I really don’t want to delete files immediately, and am not sure why it wants to. Does anyone know what I do to fix this? [1] It’s awful for two reasons: First, it gives me no advice on […]

 

Your Apple-Fu Is Impressive!

Yesterday, DaveG posted “When OSX Worms Attack” Its some good analysis of the three Apple Worms: Safari/Mail Vulnerability: Far more interesting. This is a serious vulnerability that needs to be fixed. If you are Mac user, I would at the very least uncheck ‘Open Safe Files’ in Safari preferences. I don’t understand why Apple isn’t […]

 

Safari Users: Don't Open "Safe" files after downloading

Go to preferences, general, and un-select that box. From “Apple Safari Browser Automatically Executes Shell Scripts,” via SANS and Eric Rescorla. Don’t miss Peter da Silva’s comment on Eric’s post. Eric, how do you get such good comments?

 

Second OSX Proof of Concept

Today we got a sample of rather interesting case, a Mac OS X Bluetooth worm that spreads over Bluetooth. OSX/Inqtana.A is a proof of concept worm for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It tries to spread from one infected system to others by using Bluetooth OBEX Push vulnerability CAN-2005-1333. Via F-Secure. I feel weird linking […]

 

LEAP.A Mac Trojan

There seems to be a trojan out for the Mac. See New MacOS X trojan/virus alert, developing…. There’s some interesting tidbits: 6a) If your uid = 0 (you’re root), it creates /Library/InputManagers/ , deletes any existing “apphook” bundle in that folder, and copies “apphook” from /tmp to that folder 6b) If your uid != 0 […]

 

What Software Do I Like?

In a comment on “Software Usability Thoughts: Some Advice For Movable Type,” Beau Smith asks “What Mac software do you like?” That’s a tough question for three reasons: First, there’s enough decent software (consistent, attractive, discoverable) that the bad stuff can generally be avoided. Secondly, I’d like to choose examples which are either free or […]

 

Quicktime WMF like Vulns on OSX and Windows

The folks at eEye and Fortinet have identified a variety of image based heap overflows that allow for arbitrary code execution on both OSX and on Windows. Also an article on news.com.com claims that the patch initially caused some issues for some users on both platforms, that have been addressed now. Seems that poor implementation […]

 

Netgear WGPS606 and Mac Printing

I recently bought a Netgear WGPS606 ‘print server.’ It’s a nifty little device with a 4 port 100mbs ethernet switch, a wireless bridge, and an LPD print service. I needed each of those as part of reconfiguring my office space, and here it was in one little package. It turned out to be something of […]

 

My Software is Mine.

People often become emotionally entangled with the software they use. It’s not a geek-only thing, although geeks often become more entangled with a broader range of the software they use. Normal people speak of “My Excel is screwed up,” or feel bad that their Sony CD has messed things up for them. One of the […]

 

Macs and Sony's Rootkit

[Update: Welcome Wired readers! If you enjoyed Bruce Schneier’s article on who’s responsible for security flaws, please explore a little. The economics of security and privacy issues are an ongoing theme.] It wasn’t a plan that I was going to slag Apple this week. Really, I’m fond of my Mac, I’m just tired of claims […]

 

Kudos to Microsoft, Brick-brats to Apple

MS05-038 and MS05-052 contain a number of defense-in-depth changes to the overall functionality of Internet Explorer. These changes were done mostly for security reasons, removing potentionally unsafe functionality and making changes to how Internet Explorer handles ActiveX controls. As a result of these changes that we made for security sake, for a limited amount of […]

 

The Approaching Apple OSX86 Security Nightmare

In the midst of an excellent long article on how the Wine Windows emulation layer will interact with OSX86, (“I invite you to wine“), Wil Shipley writes: When you can run Windows apps on Mac OS X, you’ll still be protected by Mac OS X. Viruses are going to be dead. D-E-D. Ok, yes, there […]

 

Apple Security Update 2005-08

There’s a new security update from Apple, for both 10.3.9 and 10.4.2. If you browse the internet, or read email, you need it. I’m getting really annoyed at Apple’s update mechanisms. Not only the agreeing to a new license as part of the update, but the awful way in which they’re arranged. The technical data […]

 

Command-Q Getting Me Down

The Mac’s Terminal.app is way too easy to quit; it seems to absorb any command-Q typed near it, even if the menubar is showing you that you’re in another app. (This may be an interaction with the preference FocusFollowsMouse.) Anyway, having just lost a bunch of terminals with useful data in them, I went and […]

 

More on Opera

It has a lot to recommend it, but there are a number of niggling annoyances: Saved pages are poorly named. (Safari gives the page a name based on its title; Opera uses the filename, often “index.html.”) Since I save a lot of web pages, this is an issue. Cookie management doesn’t seem as good as […]

 

Impressions of Opera

Having taken advantage of Opera’s offer (still valid for a few hours!) I must say, I’m impressed. Opera is snappy in a way that Safari (with all the plugins I’ve added) is not. There’s some small bits of things not working as I expect, things that should be controlled differently*, as I move, but there […]

 

Dear Adium People…

You make a very nice client. But the “Remove Contact” menu item in the Contact menu is fucking broken. It is not clear that “Remove Contact” means “Blow away this entire group of contacts.” How about (1) making the item name plural, and (2) adding the list of contacts to be deleted to the warning […]

 

Safari Enhancers

I’ve mentioned using PithHelmet. One of the most annoying remaining behaviors in Safari is that the close button closes all your tabs, and its very close to the minimize button. D’oh! Holy usability errors without a warning batman! Taboo comes to the rescue, adding that warning. (While I’m blathering about my web browser, let me […]

 

PithHelmet

After a recent hard drive failure on my Mac, I realized just how much I hate the web. No, that’s not really true. I don’t hate the web. I think the web is great. Advertising on the web, that drives me to distraction. And so I realized how much I appreciate Mike Solomon’s PithHelmet plug-in […]

 

Mac Software: Memento

Memento is an application that helps you find web pages you’ve stumbled across and forgotten where the site is. It does this by searching the cache (copies that Safari keeps locally). Very cool, and free.

 

Mac Software Updates

Devosquared has a new release of PowerCard. If you need project management, check this out. It fixes a “bug” where you couldn’t mark days as “weekend.” As a startup person, I’m not sure why that needed fixing, but maybe it matters. Apple has a announced new release of Keynote, which still can’t export to the […]

 

Safari

The “back” button is Safari is way too close to the “close” button. Safari would be a much better browser if there was an option to not close (or confirm closing) the window if there are multiple tabs open. Bugger it!

 

Framing Effects and Apple

Until I read John Gruber’s latest Daring Fireball on “The Rumor Game,” I was firmly in the “Apple is being Ridiculous” camp, and “Apple is chilling free speech” camp. The essence of the story is Apple is suing a rumors site because they’re leaking product details. What Gruber points out, and a quick Google search […]

 

Small Bits of Chaos

Ryan Singel reviews Robert O’Harrow’s new book, No Place To Hide. O’Harrow covered the CAPPS-II and other privacy stories for the Washington Post. In the spirit of the story, I’ve left the little tracking bits from Ryan’s Amazon URL. If you’d like a less tracked version, click here, or type the title into Amazon. There’s […]

 

Help! Mac Project Management Software

I need project management software for a small project (20-50ish tasks, 8-10 people come and go and need to be assigned tasks.) I’d like software that will assign resources to time blocks, handle dependencies, and be easy to use. I’ve spent the morning testing apps, going until I found something either I or the software […]

 

Quick Links

John Robb has an article at Global Guerrillas about the cost of terrorist attacks and their impact on the economic equilibria at work in cities, based on a report by the NY Fed. A terrorism tax is an accumulation of excess costs inflicted on a city’s stakeholders by acts of terrorism.  These include direct costs […]

 

Keynote can't Export to Web?!?

I was just playing with Keynote, working on some slides for Shmoocon, when I realized that I couldn’t get my slides onto the web! Now, I’ve griped about how Powerpoint makes its slides for the web, but at least it makes them. It seem that Tim Bray figured this out a while ago, but I […]