OSX Security

[Doug Peterson]

http://www.captureintegration.com/2010/07/...n-osx-security/

Lessons learned from my research following someone stealing my laptop.

If you give my your password protected mac I can get past your password in 10 minutes.

Doug Peterson
__________________
Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One, Leaf, Cambo, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Eizo & More
National: 877.217.9870  |  Cell: 740.707.2183
Newsletter: Read Latest or Sign Up
RSS Feed: Subscribe
Buy Capture One at 10% off
Personal Work

[John.Murray]

Ouch!  I'm not suprised - basically *anyone* with physical access to a computer owns it....

I recently had to recover a Domain Adminstrator account/password, definately do-able with physical access to the Server

[francois]

Nothing new here.
Three weeks ago, a customer came in with a cooler box full of MacBooks (different models). He told me that his employees set very strong passwords and forgot them since they weren't allowed to write those passwords anywhere. It took me 30 minutes to go through those ten MacBooks and set new passwords… My customer was shocked  

[Griffin Friedman]

It's for this reason that I keep my really important documents in an encrypted disk image. I've considered file vault but I've heard of a few instances where it has gotten corrupted and all data is lost.

[francois]

It's for this reason that I keep my really important documents in an encrypted disk image. I've considered file vault but I've heard of a few instances where it has gotten corrupted and all data is lost.

That's basically what I do. Important things are stored in an encrypted disk image… Initally, I've had a few issue with FileVault (that was when it was released and it might be different in Leopard or Snow Leopard) so I stopped using it.

[terence_patrick]

PGP Whole Disk Encryption is a pretty safe bet.

http://www.pgp.com/products/wholediskencryption/index.html

[K.C.]

It shouldn't take you ten minutes to reset the password. More like 5 or less.

Breaking the password on any Windows box is a little more time consuming, maybe 10-12 minutes. That's for the admin account and any others.

And PGP was bought by Symantec so we can expect that they'll ruin it within a year.

[lightstand]

I apologize if I'm sidetracking this thread in a different direction, just thought I would ask.  With laptops having that camera installed for video chatting, is there a way to set up a MobileMe account to track my laptop like "find my iBrick (since OS4)" plus take a picture of the thief using the video camera from a different computer?

I remember a service providing this but was wondering if I could set this up myself, just in case?

thanks jeff

[francois]

It shouldn't take you ten minutes to reset the password. More like 5 or less.
…

If you do it via single-user boot it's actually something like 1 minute and if you do it via de System Install DVD, it's 2-3 minutes. In any case, it's quick!

[Jeremy Roussak]

I apologize if I'm sidetracking this thread in a different direction, just thought I would ask.  With laptops having that camera installed for video chatting, is there a way to set up a MobileMe account to track my laptop like "find my iBrick (since OS4)" plus take a picture of the thief using the video camera from a different computer?

I remember a service providing this but was wondering if I could set this up myself, just in case?

thanks jeff

If you have a MobileMe account, enabling BackToMyMac on your laptop allows something like this. It doesn't track in the same way as an iPhone, since unlike the phone, the laptop has no GPS built in. A search for "back to my mac stolen laptop" on Google found a number of stories. Some involved enabling PhotoBooth to take a photograph of the thieves, as you suggest.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Roussak]

If you do it via single-user boot it's actually something like 1 minute and if you do it via de System Install DVD, it's 2-3 minutes. In any case, it's quick!

The moral, which one might suspect would be pretty easy to reach, is not to keep confidential data on a device which might well be stolen at some point.

Jeremy

[francois]

The moral, which one might suspect would be pretty easy to reach, is not to keep confidential data on a device which might well be stolen at some point.

Jeremy

100% correct!

[marliz]

Wish us nerds knew how. I forgot my Mac password last year. Total mind blackout. Heard it could be reset with the installation disk but couldn't figure that out either. Fortunately my mind unblanked the next day and I was in again.

So why do we set passwords? On the Mac (I'm seriously thinking my new one will be a trip back to Windows) you get asked for your password almost everytime you need to do something, download, install, get access to directories that somehow you ended up not "owning."

Do the passwords protect us from any dangers online with Windows?

Curious and needing to get my feet back on the ground since it's been three years away from my last Windows PC. Hope you are patient because I will likely be posting some questions to help with the switch.

There was a Mac forum for switchers from Windows. Any forum in the other direction that you know of?

Thanks!