Mac | Small Business Tech Tips

Recently we have been hearing news stories about how Mac computers are being compromised. But there is another, more subtle compromise that has also been going on. The common element to these other issues happens when users visit a site in Safari, and they get a warning page pop-up:

The message will continue to pop up about the infection - even if you hit okay, it will reappear about a second later - and you can not get it off your screen until you call, according to the information in the image. From this, most users are concerned because they believe that their computer is infected. But what is really going on is the work of scammers. (If you call the number, they will ask you to pay a few hundred dollars to have their “technicians” remove your “virus.”) Here are some steps to get rid of these messages, as your computer has not been infected, it is your browser that has been compromised and is getting re-directed, and a web program that runs once you get to this site, that has caused the problem.

Steps to get rid of the message:

Force Quit from Safari. In order to do this you can Force Quit a couple of ways. Go the the Apple icon with Safari as the program highlighted.
Another option is to open the Force Quit Applications menu. (Combination of keys: Alt/Option + Command + ESC will bring up the Force Quit Menu.)

The reason the popups keep happening even after you close multiple times is because Safari re-opens the last session by default. In order to remove the message, we need to open Safari in a new session. To do that, hold down the Shift key, then click on the Safari icon. This will bring Safari up with no more error message. To clean this from your system, you need to clear out your browsing history.

Choose History > Show History, select history entries and daily sets of entries, then press Delete.

For the most part Macs do not get viruses or malware easily because of the security features that Apple has implemented. There are still some that are getting around that, but most of the time the application has to get your permission to install on your system.

If you are concerned about viruses, malware, or other potential dangers on your work Mac or PC, give us a call at Everon. Our techs are available for our clients 24/7, 365. Call us at 888-244-1748. Or email us at [email protected]. We’re here for you.

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New iPhone/Mac Vulnerabilities That Can Impact Your Business

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Recently Apple was hit with two big issues in the same month. These gave rise to concerns that Apple products might not be as secure as most think. The first of the two came in the form of a text message that can be sent to Apple iPhones.

The text, which is entirely in Arabic, can be sent to anyone with an iPhone, and it will immediately shut down the phone. While this is more of an annoying bug than a security concern (although it definitely can be viewed as a security concern, depending on the owner of the phone and his/her need for uptime), it doesn’t seem to be harmful to the devices. Users in the Reddit.com forums found the bug, and it appears they did so by accident.

Credit: parts of this image are reproduced with permission from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unibody_Macbook.JPG.

If your phone receives the dreaded text message, you will need to turn on your phone and delete that message. One workaround to the text issue is to go into the settings,and turn off text message previews that appear on the home screen. Apple is aware of the bug and will resolve the issue in its latest update, which should be coming very soon.

The second security concern, and one that is very critical to businesses is the latest exploit which allows someone to put a permanent backdoor onto your Mac by rewriting the firmware for the BIOS to allow remote connection to the device. This affects all Macs older than mid-2014.

The reason this security concern is so troubling is, unlike other types of exploits, where if you were to be hacked you could wipe your hard drive and start clean with the appropriate updates, this targets the BIOS, meaning no matter how often you wipe your hard drive, hackers can exploit the vulnerability over and over again.

The vulnerability can be enacted as soon as a machine is woken from Sleep Mode. The security researcher who found the exploit, Pedro Vilaca, stated you can stop your machine from going into Sleep Mode to bypass the exploit. However, Apple is aware of the exploit and should patch it soon. Vilaca also stated that this is very similar to last year’s “Thunderstrike Proof-of-Concept” exploit.

While nothing will protect against this current exploit (i.e. antivirus, anti-malware), it does show that as Macs become more popular, holes are being found in the OS and, in this case, in the hardware itself. Business owners must be aware of both where their employees go on the Internet and how to protect their assets from hacking attempts.

Everon offers antivirus for Macs, as well as PCs, with a product called Webroot Secure Anywhere. We can assist in setting up hardware proxies that will prevent unauthorized access to the Internet. If you have any questions about what we can do for your Apple environment, feel free to call our techs at 1-888-244-1748 (or email at [email protected]). We’re here for you. Twenty-four/seven, 365.

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Networking Macs & PCs Together

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Here at Everon we primarily deal with the Windows environment. However, as Macs have become increasingly popular in the business world, we have gone with the tides and have been assisting in the troubleshooting of Macs, as well. At times, however, those two different types of operating systems can conflict with each other. Here’s how to solve that.

I, myself, have an Apple Mac on Mavericks OS and an HP machine on Windows 7 Professional OS. Sometimes I need to send files back and forth between the two, so my best idea was to set up a mapped drive between the two machines.

To do this, I started on my Windows PC and created a folder. Due to issues with security under user profiles, I created the folder on my C:\ drive called “Mac.” Once that was created, I right-clicked on the folder, and went into Properties ->Sharing and shared out the folder.

I then went into Advanced Sharing ->Permissions and ensured that “Everyone” was set to “Full Control.” When dealing with permissions in a Windows environment, it is always best to use your Security permissions as your more restrictive permissions. Sharing should always be set to allow everyone full control, and then you tighten it down from there. (Maybe I will write a blog post about that later. )

Once that is done, go to the Security tab and set your permissions. For me, since I wasn’t too concerned with the security of this share, I simply allowed “Everyone” to have “Modify” permissions (not “Full Control”). The difference between “Modify” and “Full Control” in a Windows environment, is that “Full Control” allows the user/group the ability to change/edit permissions and take ownership. This could mean that someone can lock you out of your own share. “Modify”allows creation, deletion, editing of files and folders inside that share, but does not allow for modifying any properties of that share.

Now you can lock down your permissions to just your Mac (however, I am not going into that here). Once you have allowed “Everyone” the “Modify” rights to your share, you are ready to share it out on your Mac.

Go to your Mac, and in the Finder, go to GO ->Connect to Server:

I have modified the image to remove my computer name. However the address string you need to type is the following: smb://{computername}/{sharename}. If you hit the + symbol, it will add this location as your favorites, so you don’t have to type it repeatedly.

Once you have that set, hit “Connect.” This will pop up a new window requesting credentials. These are login credentials to your machine, so input your username and password, and hit Connect:

This maps the share to your Mac, and you are ready to go! As you can see, I have the mapped share set to show up on my Mac desktop, however this isn’t done automatically, as it merely opens the folder.

To get the share to show up on your desktop, go to Finder ->Preferences, and inside Preferences put a check mark on Connected Servers. That is it!

For more help with networking your office Macs to your office PCs, call our technicians at Everon at 1-888-244-1748!

February 3, 2015 Everon TechTips

Mac Tips for Techs: Activity Monitor -the Task Manager for a Mac

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Before my Mac completely ticked me off, and I broke up with Apple, I was dealt a blow had been frustrating and ongoing (more on that in later blog posts). I had not been able to get my machine to turn off the digital optical out; my speakers were unusable on my MacBook Pro.

Because of this, and after a ton of Google research, I had been trying various troubleshooting techniques. One of them was to stop the CoreAudio service.

On a PC this is simple: you open Task Manager, you browse the running processes, and you kill them. However, how do you stop processes from running on a Mac? You can use a great utility called Activity Monitor, which is a built-in tool on the Mac that can be found by typing Activity Monitor into your spotlight.

From here, this should look pretty similar to Task Manager. You have your processes listed, and you can sort the list in a variety of ways. You can also select individual processes and click the X in the upper left-hand corner to kill the process.

You can also search the processes via how they affect memory, energy, disk, or the network, in addition to the default of CPU. This is crucial if you are troubleshooting certain issues with your Mac — such as whether you are low on RAM, or maybe the Mac’s battery life is dying too quickly (check the energy tab).

This is a great tool for troubleshooting a Mac, and should be included in any technician’s toolkit.

January 30, 2015 Everon TechTips

Dear Mac Users, sorry for your loss…. move on.

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Lately I have been writing a lot of blog posts for my love of all things Apple, and for the most part I am still very much in love with Apple products. However, this week has been hell for me with my Mac mini at work. I feel the need to vent here.

As I have mentioned before in blog posts (found here and here), you might want to think twice about installing Yosemite. But the allure of having the latest OS for my Mac was getting to me, so over the past several weeks, I had been trying to install Yosemite on my Mac… with discouraging results.

When downloading and installing Yosemite, I would consistently receive the following error:

I did extensive research to find out what was going on. I even downloaded the Yosemite installation on a separate Mac on a separate network, and still, when trying to install on my Mac mini at work, I received the error.

I even tried creating a bootable Yosemite USB drive (found here), but no luck! What gives?!

After much research, I thought the answer was that I was using an Apple account to download the package that was not associated with a previously purchased OS. I had heard grumblings that you cannot install Yosemite unless you have a previous OS on your Apple account (which I didn’t necessarily believe), however, I figured, “Why not?” So I signed in with my personal Apple account. I have a purchased OS on the account, I tried the update, and that’s when everything went dark.

This might as well have been what happened to my Mac-Mini...

This may as well have been what happened to my Mac-Mini…

My Mac gave me the Apple-equivalent of the blue screen of death:

I tried restarting the Mac and found that not only could I not finish Yosemite, but I couldn’t boot into Mavericks, either! Oh no! What will happen to all of my sweet cat photos that I use as wallpapers? (No, I did not back up this Mac beforehand.)

This is one of my favorites; Starcraft Kitteh. (Source: http://catsinspacesuits.tumblr.com/)

I ended up booting into the recovery utilities (Apple+R) and trying to repair the disk via Disk Utility. Sadly, it would not repair the disk. To be honest, I have been in this situation before, and I have NEVER seen Disk Utility actually repair the OS, so I didn’t have high hopes.

I also tried testing the hardware on the Mac by holding down the D-key upon startup. I received an error stating that it could not connect to Apple to perform the tests (this is an Internet-based test). I had nothing left to do but to go back to Mavericks with a new installation.

I installed Mavericks and decided, “Now that I have a fresh, completely new version of a Mac OSX, maybe I can update to Yosemite now?”

NOPE.

No matter what I did, I could not update to Yosemite. Fine. If Yosemite didn’t want me, I didn’t want it. I would stay with Mavericks and enjoy my Apple life.

Upon deciding to install the rest of my applications, I was greeted with another Mac BSOD! And again, like last time, I could not boot to Mavericks! Argh!

At this point, I was done with Apple. I was ready to become a Microsoft lifer and swear off Apples forever. However, I powered through, installed Mavericks one more time, and installed all of my applications.

At this point, though, I am cowering in fear of my Mac mini. I feel like, any wrong turn, and I will receive the ill-fated BSOD. I am scared of my Mac right now, and that isn’t the way to be. As a technician, you can’t be scared of the system you are working on. Being an IT engineer, you need the confidence that you can fix anything. That is the best way to succeed in this ever-challenging business, so, with that, I need to learn more about Macs. I need to learn how to read the kernel panic commands I am receiving, and I need to take charge and show the Mac who is boss!

I figure in the coming weeks I will tackle this head-on and try to beat it. But for right now I am a wounded duck, cowering in the weeds, hoping the hunter doesn’t find me.

I expect that my love of all things Apple will come rushing back when I make a breakthrough. Then, you can expect more Mac posts from me. But not at the present moment. Right now, Apple and I are having a little spat.