Electrical & Computer Engineering
Note: Apple is no longer providing support for OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Please ensure a plan to upgrade your system(s) have been identified.
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There are several applications available to end-users to download and install on their systems.
Cisco AMP - (only for UT systems). Please email help@ece.utexas.edu and provide the UT asset tag number (silver sticker The Property of The University of Texas at Austin) for further details. Your system will need to be verified it is property of the University.
Sophos
For personally owned Mac computers, the free online Sophos anti-virus software is recommended.
Download Sophos at https://home.sophos.com/mac.
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Apply Security Updates
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Note: If you decide not to have the updates automatically install, be sure to install them in a timely manner when prompted to do after the updates have automatically been updated (step 3 & 4). Your device should continue to prompt you on a scheduled basis.
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By default, OS X "should" be enabled for logging. To enable logging:
For OS X:
Note: the log files are rotated often by time of day, days indicated, and/or exceeding the maximum file size.
For advanced or custom log retention schedules:
A list of various log files with their retention schedule are displayed. Notice the count and size options available to change. You have the option to increase these amounts if desired.
Example: To change the count (amount of back up logs) for the system.log file. Continuing in the terminal window with the newsyslog.conf file open for editing:
A system restart will make the permanent changes.
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Note: If the orange padlock icon in the lower left side of the window is closed, click it, and then authenticate with your Mac's administrator username and password.
To configure the firewall, click Firewall Options... (10.7 and later)
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Running as an administrator? Administrative accounts are granted the ability to virtually perform anything on the computer. Every computer has an administrative account, and many users have the tendency to operate their computer in an administrative mode on a daily basis. This is against guidelines set forth by the Information Security Office.
With an administrative account, malware/viruses have an easier time:
Yes, even Mac OS X systems are susceptible to keyloggers, rootkits, trojans, and other unauthorized malicious applications
If your current account is now an administrative account, you should downgrade this account with only “user/standard” privileges, while also creating a new account for administrative purposes.
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Create a new administrative user account
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Demote the original user account to a standard user
Note: When privileged elevation is required (for example - installing a new application or updating OS X) you will be prompted to grant that elevation by logging in with your new administrator account and password that was just created.
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There are two methods to choose from, but both require Step 5 in either option to be completed.
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Special note: Apple does not publish an official support cycle for macOS. However, in general based on patching for the past few versions of macOS the following seems to apply:
Since new versions are released every year, this roughly corresponds to a 3 year support cycle, but again there's no commitment on Apple's part. The only official supported release is the most recent one.
For example: Mavericks (10.9 - October 2013) - > Yosemite (10.10 - October 2014) -> El Capitan (10.11 - September 2015) -> Sierra (10.12 - September 2016) -> High Sierra (10.13 - September 2017)
When High Sierra was released, everything before El Capitan could be considered unsupported. Though again it's not a conclusive statement, since an update for Yosemite was released in July 2017. This may have been due to the severity of the bug being fixed or the proximity of the patch to High Sierra's release. There is no way of knowing. However, given their past behavior it seems that any operating system older than El Capitan (10.11) would be considered unsupported.