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February 28, 2006
WWDC June 12 - 16, 2006?
Tom Harrington has done some research and is predicting that WWDC will be held June 12 - 16, 2006. Hopefully Apple will confirm the actual dates soon so we can avoid any travel conflicts.
Posted by mcneal at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
Hiding MeetingMaker with CMD-H
One of my biggest complaints with MeetingMaker is that CMD-H does not hide the application. Why they felt the need to have non-standard keyboard shortcuts, I'll never know. But thanks to Michael McDaniel's post, I don't have to ask anymore.
Using the "Keyboard & Mouse" System Preference Pane, it is possible to override keyboard shortcuts per application. To get this working, first free CMD-H by mapping “Master Schedule…” to something else. Then, map “Hide meetingmaker Client” to CMD-H. A quick restart of MeetingMaker, and you'll be all set.
Posted by mcneal at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
Camino Browser Reaches 1.0
The Mozilla Foundation has just released Camino 1.0, a Mac OS X browser based on the same Gecko rendering engine used in Firefox, but which uses native Aqua UI elements for the interface. Camino 1.0 is also a Universal Binary, making it one of the first Intel-native browsers for Mac OS X aside from Safari.
Posted by admorten at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2006
UM security review of Google desktop
UM's Information Technology Security Services has published an interesting
security review of the Google Desktop search product.
Their recommendation is that "Google Desktop should only be deployed to individual users on an 'as-needed' basis in
accordance with the following deployment guidelines:
a. Disable Google Integration
b. Disable Network Drive Indexing
c. Disable Indexing of secure web pages
d. Disable Indexing of Instant Messages"
Posted by mcneal at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2006
Composer 3.0 makes password available when creating Apple Packages
When creating Apple Packages (.pkg files ) with Composer 3.0 from JAMF software, you password is made available to any other user on the system. To minimize your risks, you should not use Composer 3.0 on multi-user machines.
A similar issue was reported with Casper, Composers parent product, on May 9, 2005.
My curiosity in this was sparked by this press release arrived in my inbox today:
Subject: Composer 3.0 at no chargefor those which didn't know the product , it's now available for free.
http://www.jamfsoftware.com/products/composer/
http://www.jamfsoftware.com/products/composer/getComposer.phpComposer 3.0 is a package creation utility for the Mac OS known best for its unrivaled simplicity and power. The ability to point and click to create packages in either the .dmg or .pkg format opens up the world of package creation to all system administrators. Composer creates packages by scanning a target hard drive before and after software installation and then bundles the differences between the two into a Package. In response to the popularity of Composer and community requests for a stand-alone version, JAMF Software decided to release this component of the Casper Suite at no charge.
As a developer of Radmind, I'm always interested in what other products are doing, so I downloaded Composer 3.0 and gave it a try. I then ran through the Composer creation process: taking a snapshot, installing something - I created /Applications/Test, looking for "New and Modified" files, giving it a package name, and building the package. Just for kicks, I also verified the contents, or as I like to call it, used the finder to look in a directory.
During the build process, I noticed that Composer 3.0 was taking a long time, so I ran ps to see what was going on:
root# ps -ax | grep find
5247 ?? S 0:00.01 sh -c /usr/bin/find '/afs' -newer '/Volumes/Users/mcneal/Desktop/Temp/before' >> '/private/tmp/modified'
5248 ?? U 0:00.36 /usr/bin/find /afs -newer /Volumes/Users/mcneal/Desktop/Temp/before
Composer 3.0 had decided to go into afs. All of afs. Since this would take days to complete, if it completed at all, I killed off both of these processes, allowing Composer to finish.
To create the final package, I set package type to "Apple .pkg" and clicked saved, which brought up thi non-standard authentication window:
Typing in my password and clicking okay, I quickly went to the terminal and ran ps:
root# ps -ax | grep PASSWORD
5350 ?? S 0:00.01 sh -c /bin/echo "PASSWORD" | /usr/bin/sudo -S '/Developer/Applications/Utilities/PackageMaker.app/Contents/MacOS/PackageMaker' -build -p '/Volumes/Users/mcneal/Desktop/Temp/te
And there it is, my password echoed to sudo, available for anyone on they system to get.
Posted by mcneal at 11:17 AM | Comments (2)