Collect RSS feed URLS from Mail
Mountain Lion removes RSS functionality from both Mail and Safari. To facilitate the transfer of your feeds to another RSS reader, you can collect the feed URLs by running the following script in the ~/Library/Mail/V2/RSS directory of your latest backup. Go to: ~/Library/Mail/V2/RSS/ in your latest backup. Run the following in Terminal: find . -name "Info.plist" -exec grep -A 1 Feed {} \; | grep string | sed 's/^[^>]*>//' | sed 's/<[^>]*>$//' [kirkmc adds: I never used RSS with Mail or Safari so I don't see anything there.]
published on Monday, the 30. July 2012, macosxhints
Change Safari's default search engine
This hint describes a way to change one of Safari's built-in search engines (Google/Yahoo/Bing) into a custom one, without the use of any plugins/add-ons/extensions. It involves carefully editing one of Safari's binary (much like the previous hint.) Go to /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Safari.framework/Versions/A/ and save the file named 'Safari' somewhere safe. If something goes wrong while editing, it's just a matter of copying that back (tested myself). Do the same for this file /Users/USER/Library/Safari/Configurations.plist.signed. Open 'Configurations.plist.signed' with any text editor and erase everything in it, making it blank. Save it, and then right-click to 'Get Info,' and tick the 'Locked' box. Now for the binary I recommend a hex editor, I used the free HexFiend ...
published on Tuesday, the 14. February 2012, macosxhints
Variation on Mac trojan disables built-in OS X malware protections
The anti-malware protections that are built into Mac OS X could be at risk thanks to a newer Mac trojan. The trojan in question, Trojan-Downloader:OSX/Flashback.C, was discovered by researchers at F-Secure—it's a variation on the Mac trojan discovered in September that poses as a Flash Player installer, OSX/Flashback.A. The new version still poses as a Flash Player installer, but its creators have kicked things up a notch by instructing it to disable Apple's automatic updating mechanism for its system-wide malware application, meaning that those who fall victim may never receive updates from Apple to remove the trojan. Apple added some basic malware protections into Mac OS X in 2009 as part of 10.6 Snow Leopard, but the feature became more widely known after the great Mac Defender Scare of 2011. As part of a security update issued in May, Apple not only added the ability to detect the Mac Defender trojan and its variants, the company also made it possible for its software to automatically update its malware definitions on a daily basis. After performing that update, Mac users are generally protected from Mac-targeted attacks as long as that feature, called XProtect, can stay up-to-date. But now thanks to Flashback.C, that feature is somewhat at risk. According to F-Secure, after users enter their admin passwords into the fake Flash installer, Flashback.C decrypts the paths within XProtectUpdater and proceeds to unload the XProtectUpdater daemon. After that, the malware overwrites the files with an empty space, decimating key files that XProtect needs in order to receive regular updates from Apple. "Attempting to disable system defenses is a very common tactic for malware—and built-in defenses are naturally going to be the first target on any computing platform," F-Secure wrote on its blog. There is a way to remove Flashback.C, though it involves running a virus/malware scanner in order to find infected files. Users can also remove a specific entry from two files located within Safari and Firefox .plist files (see F-Secure's page on Flashback.C for details). Read the comments on this post
published on Wednesday, the 19. October 2011, ars-technica
Sorting the list of installed Safari extensions
I have read many posts and complaints online about how difficult it is to sort the list of installed extensions in the Safari preferences, and that they cannot be sorted by other ways than the enforced sort-by-install-date. It has been suggested that removing and reinstalling the extensions in the desired order is the only way to do it. There is a better, simpler and quicker solution that does not force you to reinstall the extensions and lose configuration data. The sort order is determined by the order of items in an array in the Extensions.plist file located at ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/Extensions.plist. With the free trial version of PlistEdit Pro you can sort the list in the plist file with just a few clicks. Here is how: Quit Safari and make a backup copy of Extensions.plist in case you need to revert any changes. Open Extensions.plist with PlistEdit Pro. ...
published on Wednesday, the 24. August 2011, macosxhints
10.5: Use 1Password 2.x in Safari 5 for Leopard
To anybody that's running Safari 5 on Leopard or earlier and still wants to use 1Password 2.x, you should be aware that recently upgraded browsers are no longer being supported in version 2 of 1Password. For those of you who can't or won't update to Snow Leopard or 1Password 3 or both, here's how to enable 1Password 2.x support in Safari 5 (Thanks to Greg Kumparakat at CrunchGear for the original inspirational hint about using 1Password with Safari 4 beta). How to enable 1Password 2.x in Safari 5 for Leopard: Close Safari Go to the /Applications/ folder Right click on 1Password.app and select 'Show Package Contents' Navigate to /Contents/Resources/ Double click on SupportedBrowsers.plist. If you have Apple’s development tools installed, it’ll open in the Plist editor. If not, it’ll open in TextE ...
published on Tuesday, the 8. June 2010, macosxhints