Glenn Fleishman - Take Control of Securing Your Mac

A Mac is not impregnable, but Apple has increasingly added locks and protections over the last the decade that have made it ever harder to crack into its innards and scoop out your personal data, erase files or volumes, or install spyware. No matter whether a neer-do-well is close to hand or far away, it can be hard to damage a Mac.

Macs have nearly always been better than Windows at deterring remote attacks, however, and modern malware recognizes that. Nearly all attempts to subvert a Mac require that you visit a website, download a malicious program, and launch it, and sometimes bypass additional protections. You may be redirected to a website by evil advertising, or click a link in email you received. Its ever harder for unwanted and misleading software to even launch, much less for you to install it.

Apple has offered weaker controls around the physical security and integrity of its Macs than its software based on the notion that someone had to obtain direct access to a computer to put hands upon it. As laptop sales dominated the Mac and general computing market, Apple has pushed hard on this front, too, with improvements nearly every year or two in some aspect of securing the contents of your drives, preventing unwanted account access, and providing greater resistance from in-person attacks. This has special importance if your computer is lost or stolen, and someone can spend as much time trying to break into it as they want.

Somewhere between the two fall attacks and related improvement that make the core of macOS, all the system files and programs, ever harder for a remote or local attacker to subvert. Apple has worked through three increasingly rugged improvements that keep system files from being modified or overwritten, locking down that path of attack, too.

This book looks at all of the above to help you harden your Mac and learn the tricks that may be played so you can resist them. I also dig into what you can do in case you cant log in to your Mac or its lost or stolen, as Apple has improved those tools as well.

Because of Apples continuously improving Mac software and hardware security, I cover macOS 10.14 Mojave, 10.15 Catalina, and 11.0 Big Sur. That encompasses several years worth of Mac models:

• Mac models that predate USB-C connections, back to the earliest that can run Mojave, some of which date back to 2012; see this list

• The short-lived 12-inch MacBook with USB-C

• 2016 MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt 3 and the T1 security chip (Touch ID only)

• 2017 and later Macs with Thunderbolt 3 and the T2 security chip (Secure Enclave and other features in addition to Touch ID on laptop models)

• M-series Apple silicon Macs released starting in 2020 with the M1 chip that include Thunderbolt 3 and the security options found in the T2 chip and beyond

Security is a multi-pronged process that combines understanding risk, checking status, acting appropriately, and deploying changes and potentially new software. Start by reading two early chapters, after which you can read in any order to learn what and why to do next.

• Understand what security is and how it applies to you; see

• Get started with simple changes and new behaviors; see

• Learn to set up network access without exposing your Mac unnecessarily; see

• Make use of cloud services for sharing; see

• Protect your Mac from outside attack and snooping; see

• Configure disk and boot protection to deter risk from physical access to your Mac; see

• Avoid exposing your data; see

• Prepare for and recover lost access; see

• If your Mac goes missing, find out what you can do to track it down, lock it, or wipe it; see

Security has a broad meaning in everyday life, but a more specific one when it comes to data, networks, computers, and mobile devices.

In this chapter, I want to introduce you to what you have at risk and what your goals are in protecting your Mac, as part of the philosophy that youll find throughout this book.

As a general rule, we talk about security when we mean a way to reduce the likelihood of harm. You go through a security checkpoint at the airport. You have a home security system. A lecture is cancelled due to security concerns. An ad for a bike lock claims it offers high security.

With computing and networking, however, security is more specific: its the measures you take to prevent harm to you by the extraction, interception, loss, or corruption of your