Launched on April 24, 2008, VigiMac receives signs of life of all your Mac every 3mn.
This traffic represents more than 4.5 million web requests for the month of July.
Today, more than 830 Mac in the world have been registered on VigiMac.com.
- 2400 downloads on Versiontracker : if you have installed VigiMac without registration, it will not help to track your Mac and to recover it in case of thieft.
- Only 2 donations (thank you Jean-Paul and Guillaume for your support)
- No declaration of thieft after installation of VigiMac (No, we cannot find a Mac already stolen…)
Thank you for your interest in VigiMac.
A security hole has been recently discovered, relayed by all websites of the Mac community. This vulnerability with the ARDAgent program gives access to the root superuser with a simple Applescript command :
$ osascript -e ‘tell app “ARDAgent” to do shell script “whoami”‘
root
If it does not always work with MacOS X 10.5.3 (and previous versions), this security issue is not yet fixed and can appear with the last MacOS X 10.5.4 update.
You’ll find different ways to possibly close this ARDAgent security hole on macosxhints.com, like this command :
$ sudo chmod 755
/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent
If you use Apple Remote Desktop Admin, this command will avoid ARDAgent to launch.
Remote Desktop Admin will work thanks to this second command line and the issue doesn’t seem to appear anymore.
$ sudo chmod +s
/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent
Our first advice to improve VigiMac : setting up a firmware password.
Defined with administrator privileges, this password is the best low-level protection for your Mac.
It avoids :
- your hard disk to be formatted,
- your Mac to be started up in target disc mode, from another disc, or another partition.
You’ll find on Mac OS X Install Disc 1 the utility to easily add or remove a firmware password.
The firmware password utility is available when booting from this DVD or by following our step by step video.
Hold the Alt key at startup to test this password.
It is now possible to track it yourself on Vigimac.com to check your installation and to declare a stolen Mac.
This new tool completes our anti-theft protection.
Try it now.
Install it, register your Mac, and forget it.
We hope you’ll never need to contact us…
More information about VigiMac.
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