![]() ![]() As shown below, there were no updates to “Gatekeeper Configuration Data” since Dec 10 2017. Use About this Mac => System Report => Installations. Gatekeeper Configuration Data (140), 3451K Checking your system Checking via System Report Gatekeeper Configuration Data (162), 3459K MacOS Installer Notification (2.0), 1779K This was the state after Apple’s Feb 19 security update,showing that the update did nothing to update critical infrastructure, or even to detect the problem: Software Update found the following new or updated software: The Apple’s Feb 19 security update did NOT fix the issue (nor did any other security update for the past 13 months!). Nothing is turned off, nothing is/was set that should prevent security updates from auto-downloading and auto-installing. I triple checked all my security settings. While I follow strict security practices and thus have very low risk, I nonetheless am very concerned that fundamental security infrastructure can enter a state where it does not work. Which tells me that this is not a one-off issue. 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.AppStore preferences for security updatesĬhecking with an acquaintance, I learned that on his system, configuration for Gatekeeper and MRT had not been applied since July 2018-so his were out of date by 7 months. 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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