March 2017 – Mac Managers Meeting

March 2017 – Mac Managers Meeting


March 15th 2017 – University of Utah, Mac Managers Meeting


mac_mgrs_crowdThe University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting is held monthly at the Marriott Library on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 1 PM Mountain Time. Presentations cover Apple technology and integration in a heterogeneous university enterprise environment. This months meeting will be held on Wed, March 15th 2017, and we will provide live broadcasted and archives that will be made available 2-3 days after the meeting.

If you have suggestions on presentations, questions or comments, please your the Contact Us option.

Apple File System (APFS) – By Rich Trouton, SAP, Mac CoE


HFS+ and its predecessor HFS are more than 30 years old. These file systems were developed in an era of floppy disks and spinning hard drives, when file sizes were calculated in kilobytes or megabytes. Today, people commonly store hundreds of gigabytes and access millions of files on high-speed, low-latency flash drives. People carry their data with them, and they demand that sensitive information be secure.

Apple File System is a new, modern file system for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It is optimized for Flash/SSD storage and features strong encryption, copy-on-write metadata, space sharing, cloning for files and directories, snapshots, fast directory sizing, atomic safe-save primitives, and improved file system fundamentals.

For as long as Mac users have been creating and saving files, there have been Apple-built filesystems to store those files. Apple’s announcement of the new Apple File System (APFS) marks only the fourth time in 32 years which Apple has made the transition to a new file system, so let’s look back at the filesystems of yesterday, examine what’s being used today and look forward to what we’ll all be using tomorrow. A Developer Preview of Apple File System is available in macOS Sierra. Apple plans to release Apple File System as a bootable file system in 2017.

Rich Trouton has been doing Macintosh system and server administration for over eighteen years and has supported Macs in a number of different environments, including university, government, medical research and advertising. His current position is at SAP, where he works with the rest of the Mac CoE team to support SAP’s Mac community.

For more information about the Apple File System, see the following web pages:

To view archived presentation, click here.

 

Meet & Greet with the macOS Malware Class of 2016 – By Patrick Wardle, Synack


Due to sheer volume, Windows malware generally dominates the malicious code and news scene. Of course, Macs are susceptible to malware as well and 2016 saw a handful of new malware targeting Apple computers. Say hello to KeRanger, Eleanor, Keydnap and more! 2016 was a busy year for Mac malware authors who released a variety of new macOS malware creations. The talk will provide a technical overview of this malware, by discussing their infection vectors, persistence mechanisms and features. The talk will conclude by discussing various generic detections and best security practices to secure Macs.

Patrick Wardle is the Director of Research at Synack, where he leads cyber R&D efforts. Currently, his focus is on automated vulnerability discovery and the emerging threats of malware on OS X and mobile devices. Wardle previously worked at NASA, the NSA and Vulnerability Research Labs (VRL). As such, he is intimately familiar with aliens, spies and talking nerdy. In his personal time, Wardle collects OS X malware and writes OS X security tools.

 

To view archived presentation, click here.

 

Overriding AutoPkg – by James Reynolds,  University of Utah


James will go over how to get started with AutoPkg and some of the hurdles that you might need to overcome to get AutoPkg working like a dream for your environment & infrastructure.
AutoPkg is an automation framework for OS X software packaging and distribution, oriented towards the tasks one would normally perform manually to prepare third-party software for mass deployment to managed clients. These tasks typically involve at least several of the following steps: (i) downloading an application and/or updates for it, usually via a web browser, (ii) extracting them from a multitude of archive formats. (iii) adding site-specific configuration, (iv) adding sane versioning information, (v) “fixing” poorly-written installer scripts, (vi) saving these modifications back to a compressed disk image or installer package, (vii) importing these into a software distribution system like Munki, Casper, Absolute Manage, etc., (viii) customizing the associated metadata for such a system with site-specific data, post-installation scripts, version info or other metadata.

For more information about AutoPkg, see web site.

 

To view archived presentation, click here.

Open Discussion


Questions, comments, problems and fixes.

Directions


Note, due to scheduling conflicts with our usual meeting location, we will be meeting at the Marriott Library room 1705A located inside the Faculty Center located north of Mom’s Cafe.

For directions to the University of Utah monthly Mac Managers Meetings see the following web page.

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Archive & Live Presentation(s)


  • A live broadcast of the presentations will be available from this web page.
  • Archives of the presentations will be available from this web page.
mac managers streams web page
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