Archive for September 2, 2015

New Mac Malware Accesses OS X’s Keychain WITHOUT User Interaction

Posted in Commentary with tags , on September 2, 2015 by itnerd

Mac users beware. According to Malwarebytes, a new version of the Genieo adware has brought with it something that is extremely dangerous. It can access the OS X Keychain without user intervention. This could pave the way for other more deadly malware to do anything from steal information to pwn your Mac.

Here’s an video that shows this in action:

That video is short and quick. So I’ll explain what happened:

  • The Genieo installer asks users to authenticate with their password prior to installation
  • It then mounts a special app that asks for Keychain access, prompting a different dialog that asks the user whether to allow or deny that access.
  • The mouse cursor clicks Allow all by itself.

It happens so fast that most users would never notice. That’s the point. And what’s worse is that this isn’t exploiting an OS X flaw. Which means that preventing this from being a major threat is a bit problematic. It’s not sure if Apple is aware of this and if they are going to do anything about it at this point. But seeing as El Capitan is on the horizon, that may be Apple’s best chance of dealing with this threat. In the meantime, users should follow the usual common-sense security practices. Such as don’t download files from unknown sources and be wary of e-mails or websites that seem suspicious.

Leave a comment »

Review: Pencil by FiftyThree

Posted in Commentary with tags , on September 2, 2015 by itnerd

A very cool item for iPad users that was in my iStore goodie bag was the Pencil made by a company called FiftyThree. This is a Bluetooth stylus that was designed to work seamlessly with an app called Paper for iPad by delivering an experience that feels closer to “the real thing” than any other styli. It’s battery powered and charges via a USB port in 90 minutes. Now I don’t have an iPad so to test this I had to find someone who did. Enter Mark Taylor. He’s a registered massage therapist and lover of all things Apple, including having an iPad. I handed it over to him and here’s what he thought of it:

The Pencil is a user-friendly device to compliment your tablet. I own an iPad 2 with some apps that require sketching and coloring and I found the Pencil simple to use. I downloaded the Paper app by FiftyThree and it is user friendly and straightforward to use, especially with the Pencil. The tutorial is simple to understand and helps you get a better idea of what the Pencil is capable to doing. The Pencil is sleek and extremely comfortable to hold. Very convenient that one can use either end of the Pencil for whatever they’re sketching or erasing. It seems that FiftyThree has taken a green approach with their packaging, with how they compact the Pencil, replacement tips, and user guide in a slim, paper container.

The one improvement I may suggest is being able to adjust the sensitivity perhaps through an app as I find the accuracy can sometimes be off when tapping specifically. Other then that, I would definitely recommend this product for everyone!

Paper goes for $70 CDN and clearly Mark thinks that this is something that most iPad users would use. Thus I’d take a look at it to give yourself a new way to use your iPad.

Leave a comment »

Migrating From My Old MacBook Pro To My New MacBook Pro… And More [UPDATED]

Posted in Tips with tags on September 2, 2015 by itnerd

A lot of you might be wondering what I did with my old MacBook Pro now that I have this new one in my hands. I was going to Craigslist it. But then my wife suggested that I give it to her as it is still under AppleCare and she wanted a portable computer. I did point out the three hard drives failures as well as a failed screen as a reason to not go that route. Her response was that there was not a whole lot of risk because of the fact that it was still under AppleCare and she could use it as an upgrade from her late 2012 Mac Mini which was no longer under AppleCare. Then she could sell the Mac Mini on Craigslist. Since my wife is always right, I decided to go for it.

First, I had to move the data off of my old MacBook Pro to my new one. Fortunately, Apple has a piece of software called the Migration Assistant that allows you to move data from one Mac to another easily. You can do it over a network, via a Time Machine backup, via FireWire, via Thunderbolt, or from a Windows computer. In my case, I chose to use Thunderbolt as I thought that would be the fastest way to get this done. Here’s what I did:

  1. I booted my old MacBook Pro while holding down the “T” key which activates Target Disk Mode which allows it to be used as a hard drive.
  2. I plugged in my old MacBook Pro to my new MacBook Pro via a Thunderbolt cable.
  3. I started my new MacBook Pro and went through the setup assistant. When it asked me if I wanted to migrate data from another Mac, I said yes.
  4. When it found my old MacBook Pro, I confirmed that I wanted to migrate from it and entered my password.
  5. At this point, it asked me if I wanted to use FileVault 2 which encrypts my data and if I wanted to use iCloud to unlock my account if I lost my password. I chose to do both. At that point, I had to enter my iCloud username and password and then use two factor authentication via my iPhone to validate my identity.
  6. I then watched for 45 minutes as it pulled my data across to my new MacBook Pro. One reboot later it was done migrating.
  7. I then had to re-enter my iCloud username and password and validate my identity again via my iPhone and do a few other things to finish the process.
  8. My new MacBook Pro then booted to the finder and prompted me to enter app specific passwords for iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime.
  9. I had to then activate Find My Mac.

At this point, all the data was on my new MacBook Pro. I then had to do a few more things:

  • I had to reactivate Microsoft Office. (Two minutes)
  • I had to partially rewrite my Carbon Copy Cloner backup scripts. (Two minutes)
  • I had to update to OS X 10.10.5 (Fifteen minutes)
  • I had to reinstall Undercover and delete my old MacBook Pro from the Undercover portal. (Five minutes)

At this point I was up and running on my new MacBook Pro. Once I checked out everything to make sure I was in good shape, I then had to erase and reinstall OS X on my old MacBook Pro. Here’s what I need to do on that front:

  1. I signed out of iCloud and deleted my iCloud related data.
  2. I then de-authorized my computer in iTunes.
  3. I booted the old MacBook Pro while holding the Option and “R” keys. That boots me to the Recovery Volume.
  4. I then used Disk Utility to reformat the hard drive so that it erased everything.
  5. From there, I used the OS X installer to install OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite. As part of this, I got my wife to enter her iCloud username and password.

After 45 minutes, I had a fresh install of OS X Yosemite. Now I could move on to my wife’s Mac Mini. I followed the 9 step process above and it didn’t quite work. When I got to step 6, the Migration Assistant hung up at the end of the process. It sat there saying “about 1 minute remaining” for 20 minutes. After thinking about what to do next, I reminded myself that the Migration Assistant was just another application. So I decided to use Command and “Q” to exit the application.

It worked!

The rest of the process unfolded as I described above, with the exception of having to update to 10.10.5 as I suspect that when reinstalling OS X on this MacBook Pro, it pulled down the latest version. I did some checks to make sure all the data was intact, which it was. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m thinking that this is a bug.

I then moved on to the “few more things” that I had to do on my MacBook Pro, but this time I had to do them on my wife’s new to her MacBook Pro. After that, the only thing that was left to do after was to let FileVault 2 do its thing. On my new MacBook Pro, this process took about an hour. But on my wife’s MacBook Pro it took 6 hours, likely because of the mechanical hard drive in it.

Something that I didn’t expect was that I had to pair my new MacBook Pro to my iPhone 6 so that it would forward text messages as I noted that it broke when I made the swap. The quick way to fix this is to turn off iMessage on the iPhone and the MacBook Pro, then turn them on. Then you follow these instructions, specifically the ones under the SMS section to pair them. Strangely, I did not have to do this on my wife’s new to her MacBook Pro.

Finally, I ran Diskwarrior on both computers to make sure the data was fine by optimizing the directory and repairing permissions as well as checking all the files. No problems were found. Then I rebuilt the mailboxes in Apple Mail to make sure that they were as efficient as possible from a space perspective and were generally healthy.

Net result, both my wife and I have upgraded to a faster (in my case) or migrated to a (in her case) MacBook Pro. I call that a win-win.

Does anyone want to buy a mid-2012 Mac Mini by chance? It’s got 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HD and comes with Yosemite. Ping me if you’re interested.

UPDATE: The Mac Mini has been sold.

Leave a comment »