Quick Security fix for OS X Remote Desktop Agent

As of last week a security issue has been raised regarding Apple Remote Desktop Agent and escalation of user privileges to root (super user) without authentication. To see if your machine is affected you can run the following terminal command.

osascript -e 'tell app "ARDAgent" to do shell script "whoami"';
If the above command displays "root" then your OS suffers from the above mentioned problem. To patch this vulnerability issue the command below.

sudo chmod 0555 /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent

Here chmod (change file modes utility) changes the file mode bits for a file in this case ARDAgent.
It turns off the "set user Id on execution bit" which would be the file owner in this case root. Note the mode of 5 = read(4)+execute(1) is set for owner, group and all others.

So using a chmod of 4555 on the ARDAgent would see the problem reappear, only if this is run again by root.

All for now.

It's FireFox 3 Download Day Tomorrow!

Remember 17th June is FireFox 3 World Record Download Day!

Install this great iPhone Theme Today!

This excellent skin is available from Spargett Design Studios for free with installation instructions. You can Download it here.

Enjoy.

Download this Glass Dock Toggle App with source code

If your using Leopard and miss your old Dock like the one below.



Fear not you can get it back with this free Toggle Dock Application.



Just drag the toggle switch to applications and double click on it to display the
dialogue option box.



The script checks the current Glass Dock setting and reverses the Dock accordingly.

To View the source code select "Show Package Contents->Contents->Resources->Scripts->source"

The md5sum checksum

66e9c2d8a0a67fe2878e1af2853514c9 Glass Dock Switch.dmg.zip

To check it start Terminal and run
md5sum Glass\ Dock\ Switch.dmg.zip



Enjoy...