Macintosh "Hardening" (from NSA)

Our National Security Agency (NSA) has some rather tech-y advice for making Macintosh as secure as possible from intrusion or manipulation by outsiders. Some of this is easy, some is obvious, and some is extremely technical and/or not actually reasonable or even possible for ordinary users.

The information is in the form of a downloadable PDF that your browser will either display to you or put wherever it stows its downloads. If display, you can use save to keep it for later reference. Once saved to your local disk, Preview can open and show it to you.

My advice would be to read through it--with the intention of understanding it--today and again tomorrow. Some of it is pretty technical, so pay close attention to the parts that do seem understandable, and don't worry about the rest. Implement anything you are certain you understand, ask me about anything you like, and don't sweat the rest.

• Cult of Mac: Introduction to the NSA document
• NSA: Information Assurance > IA Guidance > Security Configuration Guides > Operating Systems > Apple Mac > Apple Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' > Hardening Tips for MAC OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
• Apple document (also linked from that NSA page): Mac OS X Security Configuration (Snow Leopard). There are several useful sections here (amid quite a lot of information that only professionals would either understand or care about). This is PDF that can be viewed in browser or downloaded.

The important message is this: Be careful (vigilant, methodical), but do not sweat this issue. With the single exception of Mac Defender (or whatever its most recent name happens to be) there are no threats out there for us. This one doesn't threaten our computers (our data); it intends to get our credit-card information. If you don't provide that, the worst we know of now that can happen is nuisance. After you have deleted the installed malware (following instructions elsewhere), there is no danger.

At present. That we know of.

Mark_
12:30 07 June 2011