![]() Once started, LockRattler will begin scrutinizing your system to find out if the System Protection Integrity (SIP), XProtect, FileVault, Software Update, Gatekeeper, and MRT services are on.Īdditionally, LockRattler makes it possible to check for any pending system updates and install them if any new updates are found. Unpacking and launching LockRattler on your Mac is all that you have to do to start checking if your Mac's security is at risk because of one or more essential security services being disabled. Helps you check if all essential security services are enabled on your Mac LockRattler is a free and very easy to use application which makes it possible to check if the most critical system protection mechanisms in macOS are enabled without having to dig through hidden folders and system files or run Terminal commands to check for them manually. I hope that these will be the last Intel-only versions, and that the next updates will be Universal Apps for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.MacOS comes with a whole slew of built-in security tools these days, but there is no default utility designed to help you check if they are enabled on your Mac at the moment. LockRattler version 4.25 is now available from here: lockrattler425 SilentKnight version 1.8 is now available from here: silentknight18įrom Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism. This follows my normal policy of keeping my firmware version database current with the latest public release of macOS, but not beta-releases. ![]() Although it doesn’t report that more recent firmware is actually wrong, it can’t check whether it’s correct for the betas. The only area in which SilentKnight still leaves beta-testers out on a limb is with respect to firmware version checking. Both apps should therefore not only be compatible with macOS 11, but provide meaningful results for it too. I have also taken this opportunity to provide version data for the first beta release of Big Sur: LockRattler accesses a dedicated page here for that information, and SilentKnight now has additional version information in my GitHub database which it uses for automatic checking. If it doesn’t, then the only workarounds left are even more clumsy, I’m afraid. In about two weeks, when Apple pushes the next scheduled security updates, we’ll see whether this works. If I’m right, this should spare you from having to quit the app and open it again to see correct version numbers. As that tool is opened each time the call is made, it shouldn’t suffer the same caching problems. ![]() After that, they switch to calling a command tool to fetch the same information. The first time that the bundle versions are obtained, they use the same calls to macOS. These new versions use a different, and less elegant approach. Trust me, I’ve been messing around for over a year trying to find a way to get the calls to work correctly, and failed. What appears to happen is that macOS caches the bundle information when it’s first obtained, and nothing seems able to force it to refresh that cache. SilentKnight users had to quit the app and open it again in order to see the versions displayed correctly. LockRattler, which doesn’t check these versions against my GitHub database, works around this by highlighting in red the details of the new updates, but still couldn’t change the version numbers shown. That works fine the first time after the app is launched, but if you then download and install any updates, running the same check a second time returns exactly the same version numbers as it did before the update. Both apps follow Apple’s guidelines to developers when they check the version numbers of various security data files. The annoyance results from a bug in macOS. These address – I hope – their longest-standing annoyance, and bring them to full compatibility with the current beta release of Big Sur. I am delighted to release new versions of my free utilities SilentKnight and LockRattler.
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