We just concluded Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference for 2022, and with it, we got our first glimpse at macOS 13, also known as Apple macOS Ventura, which is set to be released to the general public in the fourth quarter of 2022. Apple has, as usual, included some eye-catching new features like the Stage Manager viewing mode and the option to utilize Quick Look in Spotlight search results, but there are more intriguing – and possibly disruptive – improvements with macOS Ventura that have garnered less notice. The corporate security teams and Mac administrators will be interested in this post’s seven important modifications that we’ve highlighted.
- Apple macOS Ventura Hardware Limitations
Can Your Enterprise Macs Run macOS 13? – Apple macOS Ventura Hardware Limitations
For people who wish to embrace a new OS and benefit from any security enhancements, it may offer, new hardware may sometimes be required. Apple macOS Ventura removes support for more Mac hardware than any previous recent version of macOS.
You must have a computer that is no older than 2017, and for the MacBook Air and Mac Mini models, that must be 2018 instead of 2017. Owners of Mac Pros will need to upgrade from the famous “trash can” model since only Mac Pros manufactured after 2019 are compatible with macOS 13 Ventura.
Here is a list of every Mac that is compatible with macOS 13 Ventura:
- 2017 and later MacBook
- Newer MacBook Pro models
- 2017 and later iMacs
- new iMac Pro
- the 2018 MacBook Air and later
- the 2018 Mac Mini and afterward
- 2019 and later Mac Pro
- Ventura’s gatekeeper
The initial line of defense for Apple’s check, block, and delete system is Gatekeeper. In contrast to how MRT.app and XProtect often deal with eradication and blocking of certain types of prevalent malware, Gatekeeper’s job is to make sure that any code that users run complies with the local system policy. The policy contains verifications such as whether the code is authentically signed and if it has undergone certain modifications.
These tests were only carried out the first time the code was executed before Apple macOS Ventura. This implies that even after a program or executable has passed the initial Gatekeeper check, a malicious actor or malicious process might still change the code of those files.
In Apple macOS Ventura, Gatekeeper’s duties have been expanded to include verifying that programs that have been notarized haven’t been altered by illegal processes after their initial deployment. Apple claims that Gatekeeper will let certain processes modify programs – a necessary feature for things like updates – but such processes must be specifically authorized by the developer.
This is good news since it should prevent fraudulent users from using legitimate programs that are already installed on a user’s machine. Users may, however, override the Gatekeeper check in this instance. Gatekeeper provides a warning when an unauthorized change is attempted and prompts the user to accept it in System Settings.
Expect some inventive social engineering efforts to take advantage of this vulnerability, as well as close examination from security experts. We predict that this “user consent” will be managed via the infamously glitchy TCC framework based on earlier macOS architecture.
- Ways to Stay Persistent
The alteration to the venerable “System Preferences” tool may be one of the largest – or at the very least most obvious – improvements to security and user experience. System Preferences.app has been renamed and redesignated as System Settings.app.
/System/Applications/System Settings.app
Longtime Mac users will disagree with the iOS-inspired redesign. Others may complain that a user interface (UI) created for touch doesn’t translate well to a form factor focused on a keyboard, while others will claim that a makeover was long required and that the iOS aesthetic brings uniformity to the “Apple experience”. Whatever your opinion, it’s a given that you’ll need to utilize the search area to navigate the list-based interface.
- Is Passkeys the Beginning of the End for Mac OS Phishing Attacks?
Apple has been developing a new login mechanism dubbed “passkeys” for online and other distant services in cooperation with Google, Microsoft, and other industry partners. Passkeys are designed to take the role of passwords and eliminate the many security issues that they cause. Passwords serve as the entry point for account takeover and business breaches and are readily obtained from users or servers.
Passkeys are designed to address the issues with passwords. They are basically a kind of public-private key encryption where the user’s device generates and safely stores a private key while the server stores the public key. The gadget generates each passkey, which is ensured to be secure and is only ever used for one account. The gadget will enable the user to choose accessible passkeys automatically when they attempt to log in to a service, so users won’t need to remember them. To confirm that the person using the passkey is the account owner, Touch or FaceID is utilized.
Passkeys must be synchronized across a user’s devices, which implies – at least in Apple’s case – through iCloud Keychain, in order to make them as portable as passwords. Users may log in to shared or public computers using QR code authentication as long as they have one device on them that has their passkeys saved. It’s interesting to note that email and other traditional phishing approaches are “impossible” since the devices displaying and reading the QR codes need close physical proximity—in fact, they must be within Bluetooth range of one another.
Should you use Free Vpn on Apple macOS Ventura, know the risks of it.
According to Apple, passkeys make it impossible for “entire categories of security vulnerabilities, such weak and reused credentials, credential breaches, and phishing” to occur. We certainly hope so, but it will be interesting to observe how attackers respond to – or get around – this security breakthrough.
