This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 0:36 and is filed under Security, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Friday, July 7, 2006
About five years ago, security expert Steve Gibson discovered and coined the phrase “spyware”. While testing ZoneLab’s new firewall, ZoneAlarm, he noted a program trying to “phone home”. Further investigation led him to create some nifty security programs available at his site, Gibson Research Corperation, that saved many professionals and home users alike from being caught with their pants down. Not only could you protect yourself from spyware, but just know what your computer is doing and who it’s calling. It was perfect…for Windows users.
No worries my Mac friend, Objective Development Software to the rescue. Well known for it’s software LaunchBar, our absolute favorite killer-utility, OD has thoughtfully created a little snitch. Actually, that’s the name of its network monitoring and gate keeper application. Little Snitch. Like ZoneAlarm, Little Snitch will notify you when an application tries to make a network connection. Up comes a pop-up window with the icon of the product that is attempting a network connection along with detailed information to which process is making the call and to where it is calling. You then get three choices on how to handle the connection: Allow the connection once, until the application quits, or forever. You can even specify if it should only use the current port, all network ports, current server, or current server and port. Good strong security.
Sure, Macs don’t have to worry about spyware like Steve Gibson discoverd on his Windows 2000 box, but knowing what applications are making network connections is nice. Further, if you’d rather prevent an application, like iChat, from logging into the Internet, then you can use Little Snitch to prevent this action. And do understand, as Macs become more popular, spyware may start making apperances and it’ll happen without anyones knowledge like Gibson discovered. With Little Snitch installed on your unit, you’ll be the first to know when you’ve been zapped with spyware.
July 8th, 2006 at 8:06
Now all that’s required is an encyclopedic knowledge of all the parts of the system that trigger Little Snitch.
Wow! Is that good? Bad? If I say no, what will I be breaking? (P.S.: With Little Snitch you get ten seconds to figure ALL of this out.)
July 8th, 2006 at 8:32
Granted, you have to have some knowledge of some ports. But if you don’t know, just do a Google search and you’ll find what you need easy enough.
As to the above example, this is the Apple “phone home” widget from 10.4.7. The all 9s for the IP address indicates more than one address is used.
This would be a perfect example of not allowing a process to contact the Internet. Why does Apple to check if your widgets are Apple’s site or not? Didn’t seem to matter before.