PGP CEO Phil Dunkelberger explained the delay in getting PGP encryption to Snow Leopard. I like the post. It appears honest and straightforward. I still think PGP should give extensions to users for their subscriptions while they are sorting it out. It seems silly that my subscription is running (indeed I paid my renewal since Snow Leopard released) but I can’t use the application. I left a comment on the blog post. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea if more of us did.
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The most recent episode of the Mac Power Users is out. This one provides an overview of Mac security. Enjoy.
Also, our next episode will be about the services menu in Snow Leopard. Send in your questions and favorite services (even the home-cooked variety).
Apple hired security prodigy Ivan Krstić. Promising News. So far, Apple has managed to stay out of the Virus quagmire. Hopefully this means they stay that way.
If I was in charge, I’d hand Ivan a laptop and just say “find a weakness, fix it, then find another.”
The whole question of virus software on Macs is back the last few days. First Apple put up a page advising users that virus software may not be a bad idea. Then they took it down. I’ve received several emails from readers asking what to do. I’m pretty careful about my computing. I’m anal about data encryption. But to be perfectly honest, I’m not very excited about running virus software. I’ve got no virus software on my Macs. Some day I may decide I need it but at present, I’m just not convinced.
As Apple marketshare increases, things may change and Mac users are probably going to end up needing virus at some point but for me, not yet.
Today Apple released a patch to update Quicktime. The update closes that security gap that has had everyone’s panties in a bunch. Once again, I pressed that “update” button like an Apple lemming. Once again, nothing blew up.
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For better or for worse, when it comes to internet security, I’m a novice. I know enough to secure my data. Indeed, since I carry around client data I keep everything locked up tight in an encrypted sparse image as I demonstrated in screencast #__. But in terms of people getting into my system via internet sniffing I know very little. Since some internet security specialists are raising alarm bells over the fact the Mac Firewall is defaulted in the “off” position, I spent a little time reading up on things last night. Apple goes to some length explaining the Leopard firewall right here.
There seem to be two camps on this issue. One group of experts say that the sky is falling and you should never ever turn your Mac on without the firewall enabled. Another group says you probably don’t need your firewall so long as you are behind a decent router. Among those in the second category are Steve Stanger and John Foster (at least I think it was John .. sometimes it is hard to figure out exactly who is talking on MacBreak Tech). Steve actually explained that there are some times when a Firewall is a very good thing. He used a hotel network as an example, but explained that when you are sitting at home or work behind your router, it really doesn’t make much difference. I trust John and Steve and decided I’m not going to get overly excited about this. I’ll probably turn it on when I’m not at work or home but otherwise I’ll leave it off. To each his own but that is me. I live dangerously. You’ll have to excuse me now. I plan to go run with scissors.
I stumbled upon this excellent article discussing the security improvements in Leopard. The author makes an excellent point that easy backups (Time Machine) is part of a security system. The explanation of buffer overflows was also so well done that even I understood it.
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