The news summary is back! And right in time for the Apple event next week (Tuesday, Sep 12, 10am PDT)! This is a big heavy summary to catch up on the last eight weeks. If you believe I missed something, let me know and I will add it next week.
(Sponsor: Mosyle)
The only Apple Unified Platform for Business
Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates Enhanced MDM, Endpoint Security, Internet Privacy & Security, Single Sign-On, and Application Management on a single Apple-only platform.
Click here to learn why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.
We got macOS 13.5 and iOS 16.6 right at the beginning of the break and a few security updates since then. The macOS Sonoma beta is on the seventh incarnation, iOS 17 and watchOS on the eighth, and, oddly, tvOS is on the ninth.
But aside from the betas and looming system releases, there were many updates for popular MacAdmins tools and software. I myself used the break to write up a few tutorials that have been rattling around in my head for a while.
We have three more big MacAdmin conferences this year: Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) in Austin, Texas, USA, Sep 19–21, MacSysAdmin in Göteborg, Sweden, Oct 3–6 and Objective-by-the-Sea 6.0, in Spain, Oct 9–13.
This year, I will be presenting at MacSysAdmin in Göteborg! I have the closing session on Friday, and will be talking about “MacAdmin Tools” so do not leave early. If you are there, too, be sure to say ‘Hi!’ and you will be rewarded with with some Scripting OS X stickers.
Eight weeks of summer hiatus was a long time. There were several scheduling requirements that lead to the long break this year. I plan to organize this differently next year.
If you would rather get the weekly newsletter by email, you can subscribe to the Scripting OS X Weekly Newsletter here!! (Same content, delivered to your Inbox once a week.)
News and Opinion
- One Mac Admin’s tips on maintaining a popular Open Source project – Graham R. Pugh
- Jamf announces its acquisition of dataJAR, a leading Apple – Jamf
- Time (For You) To Give A Presentation! – Pam Lefkowitz, Radical Admin Blog
- Facebook Says Apple is Too Powerful. They’re Right. – Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
- ‘Windows is a declining ecosystem,’ Jamf CEO says – Jonny Evans, Computerworld
- You Decided to Change Platforms: Now What? – Pam Lefkowitz, Radical Admin Blog
- Backblaze Drive Stats for Q2 2023 – Andy Klein, Backblaze
- Positive Changes to Apple Business Manager Signup Flows! – Tom Bridge
- Coming Soon: Platform SSO for macOS – Brian Melton-Grace, Microsoft Community Hub
- Survey: Why Apple Is Booming in the Enterprise – Kandji Blog
- The Mac Admins Community Groups Map – Dr. K
macOS Sonoma and iOS 17
- Why it is Finally Time to use Managed Apple IDs for Work – Jordan Miller
- An Alerting Vista of Sonoma – Craig Hockenberry
- Uncovering weaknesses in Apple macOS and VMWare vCenter: 12 vulnerabilities in RPC implementation – Aleksandar Nikolic, Dimitrios Tatsis, Talos
- Auditd: the logs we need, not the logs we deserve – Bob Gendler
- Testing…123…Testing – Pam Lefkowitz, Radical Admin Blog
macOS and iOS Updates
- macOS Ventura 13.5 and iOS 16.6 – Armin Briegel
- macOS Ventura 13.5.2 (22G91): About, Security
- About the security content of iOS 16.6.1 and iPadOS 16.6.1
- About the security content of watchOS 9.6.2
- Apple has released Ventura 13.5.2, an urgent security update – Howard Oakley
- macOS Ventura 13.5.2 Update (22G91) What’s New? – Mr. Macintosh
Social Media
- Aaron on X: “New in macOS Sonoma: You can now use one Mac to revive or restore another Mac that’s in DFU mode right from Finder. Previously you needed to install Apple Configurator to do this but now it’s built in! Accidentally stumbled upon this while playing around with some stuff.”
Security and Privacy
- BlueNoroff: How DPRK’s macOS RustBucket Seeks to Evade Analysis and Detection – Phil Stokes, SentinelOne
- Demo: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS – Konstantin Darutkin
- ShadowVault is the latest Mac data-stealer malware, reportedly – Joshua Long, The Mac Security Blog
- Security Update: June 20 Incident Details and Remediation – Bob Phan, JumpCloud
- JumpCloud Intrusion: Attacker Infrastructure Links Compromise to North Korean APT Activity -– Tom Hegel, SentinelOne
- Apple Crimeware: Massive Rust Infostealer Campaign Aiming for macOS Sonoma Ahead of Public Release – Phil Stokes, SentinelOne
- An Apple Malware-Flagging Tool Is ‘Trivially’ Easy to Bypass – Lily Hay Newman, Wired
- Jamf Threat Labs explains their discovery of a post-exploit UI hack of Airplane Mode – Jamf Threat Labs
- XLoader’s Latest Trick: New macOS Variant Disguised as Signed OfficeNote App – Dinesh Devadoss and Phil Stokes, SentinelOne
- Bypassing App Management With TextEdit – Michael Tsai
- Bloated Binaries: How to Detect and Analyze Large macOS Malware Files – Phil Stokes, SentinelOne
- Mac users targeted in new malvertising campaign delivering Atomic Stealer – Jérôme Segura, MalwwarebytesLabs
- AI and Cybersecurity: What You Need to Know – Kandji Blog
Support and HowTos
- Git Commit Template – Clayton Burlison
- Disabling in-app review requests for apps installed from the macOS App Store – Rich Trouton
- Signing PowerShell Scripts on macOS – John C. Welch
- Gather logs with a Munki NoPkg – Kevin M. Cox
- How to Configure Escrow Buddy to Escrow a FileVault Personal Recovery Key (PRK) in Jamf Pro – HCS Technology Group
- How to turn off Activation Lock – Andrea Pepper, SimpleMDM
- RAID and macOS – Scripting OS X
- My AutoPkg Authoring Enviroment – Anthony Reimer
- Moving a user’s home or CloudStorage wants a lot of space – Eric Hemmeter
- Secure Token, Bootstrap Token, and Mac Security: How They Fit Together – Mike Boylan, Kandji
- macOS Screenshots during Setup Assistant – Jim Zajkowski
- Managing login mechanisms in the macOS authorization database – Elliot Jordan
- Finding Balance While Working Remotely – Mike Solin
- Using patch title policies + installers for different architectures – Dr. K
- What are configuration profiles? – Andrea Pepper, SimpleMDM
- LAPS Enhancements and Changes to the UIE Management Account – Tom Koehler, Jamf Tech Thoughts
- What is the Mac Evaluation Utility tool? – Jonny Evans, Computerworld
- How to build a custom macOS VM on Apple silicon – Howard Oakley
- Notes on Jamf Pro API Roles and Clients – Bryson Tyrell
- mg Text Editor – Michael Tsai
- How to Configure Account Driven Enrollment and Enroll a Personal Device in Jamf Pro – HCS Technology Group
- A Guide to Installing and Using Pantone Connect in Adobe Creative Cloud – HCS Technology Group
- Starting a sole proprietorship business to get a DUNS number for Apple Business Manager – Rich Trouton
- Jamf Protect integrates with Microsoft Sentinel – Thijs Xhaflaire
- Apple Configurator: No Space Left on Device — Mac Lovin’
- Handling a QR Code on your iPhone – Steve Hayman
- Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit – Mykola Grymalyuk
- Jamf Pro: Organization – Rob J Schroeder
Scripting and Automation
- PowerShell version of Rich Trouton’s “Listing and downloading available macOS installers…” script – John C. Welch
- dhcav/ShortcutsForJamfPro: A collection of Shortcuts for iOS, iPadOS, macOS and even watchOS to be used with Jamf Pro
- Exploring Unicode in macOS with clui – Joel Bruner
- Intune Uploader – Tobias Almen
- Deploying Xcode on managed devices – Armin Briegel, Jamf Blog
- Jamf Pro LAPS: Retrieving Password via Terminal – Dan K. Snelson
- Generation gap: Using Shortcuts with Folder Actions – Jason Snell, Six Colors
- Build a macOS Application to Run a Shell Command with Xcode and SwiftUI: Part 2 – Armin Briegel
- Updating management status in Jamf Pro computer inventory records on Jamf Pro 10.49.0 and later – Rich Trouton
- Unmanage mobile devices & computers in Jamf Pro – Smashism
- Introduction to Shell Scripting – HCS Technology Group
- Build a notarized package with a Swift Package Manager executable – Armin Briegel
- Introducing JCDS 2.0 for uploading packages to Jamf Pro Cloud distribution points – Graham R. Pugh
- Working with osquery Data in Snowflake – t-lark.github.io
- notverypc/AutoPromo: Promote apps in a munki repo
- Removing Oracle Java from macOS – Rich Trouton
- Blocking Oracle Java Rich Trouton
- Jamf Pro: Get Mac Warranty Information – Rob J Schroeder
- khronokernel/py_sip_xnu: Python module for querying SIP status on XNU-based systems
Updates and Releases
- Jamf Pro 10.50.0
- Passkeys Public Beta – GitHub Blog
- SimpleMDM introduces scheduled scripts and auto attributes – SimpleMDM
- jeremybessard/sumb: Scheduled Updates Menu Bar
- Munki 6.3.3 Release (signed and notarized)
- jessepeterson/kmfddm v0.4.1
- Support 2.5
- MDS 5 Administrator Guide – Twocanoes Software
- swiftDialog v2.3.2 (v2.3 release notes)
- AutoPkg 3.0 RC1
- Setup Your Mac (1.12.6) via swiftDialog (2.3.2) – Dan K. Snelson
- facebookincubator/sado: A macOS signed-app shim for running daemons with reliable capabilities
- Visual Studio for Mac Retirement Announcement – Anthony Cangialosi, Visual Studio Blog (Don’t panic! This is NOT Visual Studio Code but the “Visual Studio for Mac IDE”)
- mac-ibm-notifications 3.0.3
- Baseline 1.3 Beta1
- Outset 4.0.4
- Mist 0.9.1
- erase-install 30.2
- Script2Pkg 1.1.1
- Mac Admins Open Source announces Jamf Pro SDK for Python – Nate Walck, MacAdmins.org
To Watch
- MacAD.UK 2023 Videos
- PSU MacAdmins Conference 2023 Videos
- August 2023: MacAdmins Meeting Archived Presentations and Slides Online – Marriott Library, Apple Infrastructure
To Listen
- Interview With Mr. Macintosh of MrMacintosh.com – Command-Control-Power
- Support App continues to be a must-have with latest 2.5 release – Apple@Work Podcast, 9to5Mac
- HomeKit Panel Part 2 – Mac Admins Podcast
- An influx of Elons, a hospital visit, and magic men Lock and Code S04E18
Just for Fun
Support
If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!
If you want to support me and this website even further, then consider buying one (or all) of my books. It’s like a subscription fee, but you also get a useful book or two extra!