Some clients have reported problems with HP laser printers failing to print. Sometimes there’s an error. Other times, the print job just disappears into the ether. It’s unclear why this is happening or how widespread it is, but here’s a workaround that can help. Create a new printer configuration by clicking the + button in System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and selecting your printer in the list. Then, from the Use pop-up menu, choose something other than the default Secure AirPrint driver. We’ve had the most luck with Generic PostScript Printer. Both the old and new configurations will be available when printing, so if one doesn’t work, try again with the other one.

(Featured image by Mahrous Houses on Unsplash)

In 2017, Apple added support for Qi wireless charging to the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, and with the iPhone 12 lineup, it introduced its own MagSafe wireless charging technology. There’s no denying the convenience of wireless charging, but keep in mind that it’s extremely inefficient compared to wired charging. Individually, that may not matter much when you’re charging overnight from a wall-connected charger. But across billions of phones, it’s more problematic. One estimate suggests that wireless charging requires nearly 50% more power than cable. And if you’re charging from a wireless battery pack, wasting that juice means less of a top-up before exhausting the battery pack. Charging speed suffers too. In short, to charge your iPhone quickly and efficiently, whether from a wall-connected charger or a battery pack, stick with the traditional Lightning cable.

(Featured image by iStock.com/grinvalds)

For most homes and offices, a standard or mesh Wi-Fi network works fine for providing Internet access throughout the building. And when higher throughput is necessary, it’s usually not that difficult to pull Ethernet cable from room to room.

But some buildings seem almost impervious to networking—imagine thick brick walls that both block Wi-Fi signals and make it nearly impossible to pull wire from one room to another. It may not be the entire building—you may just have trouble extending a network into a remote attic or basement room, or to a freestanding outdoor structure.

Where there’s a will (and enough money), there’s a way, of course, but there are two affordable alternatives for bringing network access to tricky spots: powerline networking and MoCA.

Powerline Networking

As you might expect from the name, powerline networking uses technical magic to piggyback data on top of the standard electric cables that are undoubtedly already in every room of your home or office. It has been around for years but was long considered slow and unreliable. Modern iterations of the technology, called HomePlug, have solved many of those problems and offer up to 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) of throughput.

You need a pair of powerline adapters to create a network, and all you have to do is plug them in. However, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Powerline adapters must plug directly into a wall socket. You can’t connect them to a power strip or an uninterruptible power supply because the surge protection blocks the frequencies they use for transmitting data.
• It’s often said that powerline adapters must be on the same circuit, but it’s impossible to predict exactly what that means with the wiring in your particular building. The only way to know for sure is to test to make sure the adapters pair up and provide acceptable throughput. (Depending on the wiring, they may work, but at slower speeds.)
• If you’re in an apartment or a building with electrical wiring that might extend outside of your space, you can enable security to ensure that other powerline adapters can’t join your network.

The simplest powerline adapters provide just an Ethernet port, but others may offer an additional Ethernet jack, a pass-through electric outlet, and even a built-in Wi-Fi extender. Regardless, they’re inexpensive, with prices for a two-pack well under $100.

MoCA

Its name may sound like a tasty hot drink, but MoCA stands for Multimedia over Coax Alliance, and it’s a standard for using coaxial cables for networking. This isn’t a new idea: those who were around the tech world in the 1980s and 1990s may remember 10BASE2 Ethernet, also known as thin Ethernet, which used thin coaxial cable. However, 10BASE2 Ethernet ran at only 10 megabits per second (Mbps), whereas MoCA offers throughput of up to 2.5 Gbps. MoCA’s win is that it runs over the coaxial cables installed in many buildings, primarily homes, to distribute cable TV. If you already have coaxial cable in your walls, why not use it for networking?

Security remains an issue if your coax cables also carry cable TV or broadband Internet and thus extend beyond your control. The problem is that MoCA signals are quite powerful and can travel farther than intended, such as to neighboring houses. The simple solution is a point-of-entry filter added where the coax enters your house—it prevents MoCA signals from leaving your house. You may also be able to configure a MoCA security key to keep your traffic private, but not all MoCA devices support security.

As with powerline networking, setting up a MoCA network generally requires at least two adapters, although some routers have built-in MoCA capabilities. MoCA adapters usually provide one or two Ethernet ports, although it’s also possible to get Wi-Fi network extenders that support MoCA. The hardware is a bit more expensive than powerline gear, with prices for a two-pack in the $120 to $150 range.

Choosing Wires

Both powerline networking and MoCA require that you have properly configured wires in your walls, so there are no guarantees with either. Your building’s electrical system may be too complex for powerline networking, and even if you have coax cables, there’s no way of knowing if they were installed well or have suffered damage over the years.

But neither is particularly expensive, so as long as you purchase from a vendor that allows returns, you should be able to test either one easily. And if you’re looking for a recommendation about particular brands to get or avoid, contact us.

(Featured image by iStock.com/architectphd)

Apple’s new AirTag tracking device is an amazing bit of technology—it’s an elegant disc about the size of a stack of four US quarters that communicates its location with other Apple devices using Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband. Pair an AirTag with your iPhone and put it in your laptop bag, and from then on, you can use the Find My app to find your bag no matter where you’ve left it.

The key to the system is Apple’s Find My network of hundreds of millions of Apple devices, which detect nearby AirTags and report their location to Apple’s servers. It’s all completely private and secure, so only the owner of an AirTag can see where it is. All the devices in the Find My network are anonymous, and location data is encrypted at every step of the way. Not even Apple can locate an AirTag or determine the identity of the device that helps find it.

Plus, if you have an iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 with support for Ultra Wideband, the Find My app can use Precision Finding to give you the direction and distance of your nearby items. (“You’re getting warmer!”) If you need more help to locate an AirTag that’s out of sight, you can make it play a sound.

At $29 for one or $99 for a pack of four, AirTags are an inexpensive way to keep track of keys, purses, suitcases, kids’ backpacks, and more. You could even attach one to your dog’s collar, but it would likely be helpful only in urban areas where people with iPhones would come close enough to your rambling pet.

With great power comes great responsibility, though. There are always those who will attempt to use AirTags to track other people’s movements surreptitiously, perhaps a jealous spouse, a vindictive ex, or someone with a creepy crush. It wouldn’t be hard to hide an AirTag in someone’s car, in a seldom-used purse pocket, or in the lining of a coat.

Apple is fully aware of these possibilities and has built three safeguards into the AirTags and the Find My network. Given the potential for abuse, it’s essential that everyone knows what an AirTag is (done!) and how to determine if someone may be using one to track another person (read on!).

• Safety Alerts: If you get an “AirTag Found Moving With You” alert on your iPhone, you know that there’s an AirTag separated from its owner that’s traveling with you. Most likely, it’s in something you’re borrowing or attached to an item that someone left in your car. If you can’t easily find the AirTag, you may be able to make it play a sound. (That won’t work if the owner is in range or if it has been with you overnight such that its identifier has changed since the alert.) If you know why it’s there, you can pause the safety alerts for a day or disable them permanently for those in your Family Sharing group. If the owner has marked it as lost, you can tap Learn About This AirTag to discover its serial number and contact information for the owner. If there’s no good explanation for why the AirTag is with you, you can remove its battery to prevent it from reporting your location.
  
• Safety Sounds: If an AirTag is separated from its owner for 3 days, it will make a sound the next time it moves. There is some concern that 3 days may be too long and that the sound starts only after the AirTag moves. Apple has said it may change the time or tweak the system if the sound isn’t achieving its goal of tattling on maliciously placed AirTags.
• NFC identification: Let’s say you find an AirTag after a safety alert or sound. Hold an iPhone or other NFC-capable smartphone to the white side of the AirTag and tap the notification to load a website with the AirTag’s serial number and the last four digits of the owner’s phone number (which may help you or the police identify them). If the owner has marked it as lost, you’ll also see their phone number or email address.

The safety alerts appear only on iPhones, of course, but there are two other requirements that must be true as well. First, the iPhone must be running iOS 14.5 or later to display the alerts, so make sure you update. Second, in Settings > YourName > Find My > Find My iPhone, the Find My network option must be enabled. If you don’t want your iPhone to participate in the Find My network, you can turn that option off, but doing so means you’ll never receive a safety alert either.

(A quick aside: the Find My iPhone option in that screen is necessary to locate your iPhone if it’s lost or stolen. It also enables Activation Lock, which prevents a thief from erasing and reactivating your iPhone unless they can find your Apple ID password. Always leave Find My iPhone enabled. The Find My network can also help locate iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches that are offline and can’t report their location to Find My on their own.)

The ultimate takeaway is that if you ever get a safety alert, hear an AirTag making a sound, or find an unexpected AirTag, hold your iPhone or an NFC-capable Android phone to the white side of the AirTag to load a Web page with more information. If you have reason to believe you’re being stalked, contact local law enforcement and give them the AirTag’s serial number, which they can use, with Apple’s help, to identify the AirTag’s owner.

(Featured image by Apple)

Sure, you could select a file in the Finder and choose File > Move to Trash or drag it to the Trash in the Dock. Similarly, you can trash selected photos in Apple’s Photos app by choosing Image > Delete X Photos, or by pressing the Delete key, but both of those methods result in a dialog asking if you’re sure. The easiest way of trashing a file in the Finder or a picture in Photos is to select it and press Command-Delete. Poof, it’s in the Trash (Finder) or Recently Deleted album (Photos), with no extra effort or prompts! And if you accidentally trash the wrong thing, just press Command-Z to restore it. Keep this key combination in mind for other apps too, since they may also support it as a shortcut for “delete without prompting.”

(Featured image by iStock.com/YurolaitsAlbert)

Do you have a child heading off to college soon? As you’re undoubtedly aware from high school, a computer is essential for a college student. If you haven’t been paying close attention to Apple’s Mac lineup, you might wonder which model makes the most sense.

First, don’t buy anything without first checking with the college. Many college departments have specific requirements based on the software that students have to use in their classes. Generally, these revolve around processor type, amount of RAM, and storage space. Luckily, current Macs should meet the requirements.

Colleges often specify—and students usually prefer—laptops instead of desktop machines. Although the iMac is an excellent machine with a gorgeous screen, it’s too big and unwieldy for the transient lifestyle of the typical college student. The same is true of a Mac mini and external display. A laptop is much easier to pack during moves, and it can travel to class every day. A student who’s accustomed to taking notes on an iPad with a Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil might be able to use that along with a desktop Mac, but most people should focus on Apple’s laptops.

In the past, it was harder to decide which model was best for a given student, but with Apple’s move to the M1 chip, which significantly outperforms the Intel processors used in previous models, the decision is easier. We see three primary scenarios:

• Most students: Buy Apple’s M1-based MacBook Air. It’s Apple’s smallest, lightest, and least expensive laptop, but thanks to its M1 processor, it has nearly identical performance to the heavier and more costly M1-based MacBook Pro. It also has the same lovely 13.3-inch Retina display. It starts at $999, and an education discount may be available.
• Slightly better specs: If cost is of little concern, the M1-based MacBook Pro offers just a bit more performance due to fans that keep its M1 chip cool. It also has a Touch Bar (which some people like, but others don’t), somewhat longer battery life, and nominally better speakers and microphones. It starts at $1299, and again, education pricing may be available.
• Windows compatibility: The only reason to buy an older Intel-based MacBook Pro— available in either 13.3-inch ($1799) and 16-inch ($2399) models—is if Windows compatibility is essential. All Intel-based Macs can run Windows with no problems, either by restarting in Apple’s Boot Camp or using virtualization software like VMware Fusion (free for students) or Parallels Desktop. (On M1-based Macs, it’s possible to run Parallels Desktop and Windows for ARM Insider Preview, but we can’t recommend that anyone rely on that combination yet.)

Regardless of which laptop you decide on, you’ll have to pick a processor, an amount of RAM, and storage capacity:

• Processor: With the M1-based MacBook Air, you have a choice between two CPUs that are identical apart from one having a 7-core GPU and the other an 8-core GPU. No one is likely to notice the difference for everyday software, but the price difference is only $50 if you’re also getting at least 512 GB of storage. (The M1-based MacBook Pro offers only the 8-core GPU chip.) For Intel-based Mac laptops, there are various options based on clock speed and number of cores. They’re all fine, but you pay for performance, so buy what fits your budget and needs.
• RAM: With the M1-based Macs, you can choose between 8 GB and 16 GB of RAM. 8 GB may be acceptable, but we recommend 16 GB. Intel-based Mac laptops start at 16 GB, which is a decent base level, and you can go up to 32 GB or 64 GB (16-inch only). Generally speaking, go beyond 16 GB only if you know you need it.
• Storage: For the M1-based Macs, 256 GB is the lowest storage level, whereas the Intel-based Macs usually start higher. Either way, you can upgrade to a maximum of 2 TB. Choose the amount of storage based on budget and anticipated usage—video takes a lot of space, as can large numbers of photos, but most other uses don’t.

To our thinking, the most obvious choice for a Mac that’s likely to last for four years of college would be the M1-based MacBook Air with the 8-core GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. Be sure to budget for AppleCare+, too; it’s almost guaranteed that some mishap will befall a student laptop, and AppleCare+ covers up to two incidents of accidental damage every year.

You’ll need to have some conversations with your child to find out what they think they’ll need—and be sure to double-check that against the college’s recommendations—but if you have any questions after that, don’t hesitate to contact us.

(Featured image by Apple)

We constantly say, “Use a password manager!” for good reason. Password managers make it easy to generate, store, and enter strong passwords. You don’t have to decide whether or not your password is strong or weak, remember it, and type it accurately every time you log in to a website.

But what about those passwords you have to enter regularly, like your Mac’s login password, your Apple ID password, and the master password for your password manager? And the passcodes for your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch? Plus, it may also be helpful to be able to remember and type passwords for a few services that require you to enter the password into an app instead of a Web browser. (Of course, you can copy and paste the password from your password manager, but that’s fussy if you have to do it frequently.)

For such passcodes and passwords, you’ll want to come up with options that are strong, memorable, and easily entered. Here’s what we recommend for most people. (If you’re a target of a nation-state or regularly deal in highly confidential government or corporate information, you’ll need an even higher level of security.)

Passcodes

It’s essential that your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch have a passcode that can’t easily be guessed. Once someone can get into an iPhone or iPad, they could read all your email, look at all your photos, make purchases via Apple Pay, and impersonate you in conversations with others. And yet, many people use worthless passcodes like 111111 or 123456. Don’t do that! Also, don’t worry about making a passcode that’s easy to type—with Touch ID, Face ID, and Apple Watch unlocking, you don’t have to type your passcode all that frequently.

Since we’re talking about physical objects that can’t be accessed remotely and are most likely to be compromised by someone who knows you personally, the key is to think about what six digits you can remember but that even people who know you well couldn’t guess.

For instance, you might think of using 081995 if you were born in August 1995, but your birthdate is both widely known and easily discovered. A better pattern would be the dates of the month associated with the birthdays of your best friend from high school, your favorite cousin, and your late grandmother—132408 if they were born on May 13th, July 24th, and November 8th. No one will ever guess that.

You get the idea. Think of dates associated with people or events important to you but that even close friends or family members wouldn’t necessarily know. Then combine those days, months, or years in a way that makes sense to you. You’ll end up with a strong passcode that you’ll never forget.

One last point. Given the level to which data syncs between your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, we don’t see any significant benefit in creating different passcodes for each. Come up with a secure passcode and use it on all three.

Mac Login Passwords

Much like an iPhone’s passcode, the primary vulnerability for your Mac’s login password is someone who has physical access. You don’t have to worry about remote brute force attacks (as long as you don’t have remote access enabled in System Preferences > Sharing) or password files being stolen, suggesting that the password doesn’t need to be insanely strong and equivalently hard to type.

That’s especially true for an M1-based Mac or Intel-based Mac with a T2 security chip, and even more so if you have enabled FileVault (which we recommend). But if it’s an older Intel-based Mac without a T2 chip, it’s conceivable that a thief could image the drive and use brute force attacks to find the password. A stronger password might make sense for such an older Mac.

Considering all this, we recommend coming up with a password that’s easy to type, memorable, and difficult to guess for even those who know you well. It doesn’t have to be strong enough to protect against serious cracking software unless you live in a Spy-vs.-Spy world. Consider taking a few words from a song lyric or movie quote you’ll never forget and jamming them together, such as “ettubrute” or “goestoeleven.”

If you unlock your Mac and apps using an Apple Watch or Touch ID most of the time, you can make the login password a bit stronger without the annoyance of having to type it so frequently.

Apple ID and Password Manager Passwords

When it comes to your Apple ID password, the master password for your password manager, and other passwords to online services you need to type, attacks will take place either remotely or be directed against a stolen password file. Plus, your Apple ID password and master password to your password manager literally hold the keys to your kingdom, so they must be extremely strong and resistant to automated cracking. It’s also essential that you won’t forget them and that you be able to enter them—on both a Mac keyboard and an iPhone keyboard—reasonably easily. What to do?

One possible solution is to create a long passphrase of random but easily remembered words, as suggested in the classic xkcd cartoon. Current advice suggests that a passphrase of five words—with at least 32 characters—is now necessary to resist modern cracking methods.

Passphrases are highly secure, but they can be tedious to type and may not work well for an Apple ID password. Apple requires that Apple ID passwords have upper and lowercase letters and include at least one number. But don’t make it longer than 32 characters; some have reported problems with longer passwords.

For a compromise approach, consider a password built using the following rules:

• It starts with an uppercase letter. That satisfies Apple’s requirement and means you don’t have to switch between upper and lowercase keyboards on an iPhone more than once.
• That letter and subsequent lowercase letters come from the initials of unrelated people, movie titles, the first few letters of a saying or product name, or something similar that you’ll have no trouble remembering.
• It includes several punctuation characters accessible from the iPhone’s numeric keyboard that don’t require the use of the Shift key on the Mac keyboard.
• It ends with digits developed along the lines of the passcode above—this keeps you on the iPhone’s numeric keyboard. (You could also swap the order of the punctuation and digits.)
• Overall, it has at least 13 characters, preferably more.

(As an aside, does having two-factor authentication (2FA) turned on for any account where you’re creating a memorable password let you make a weaker password? Yes, in the sense that your overall security is much higher with 2FA because someone would have to hack your password and compromise the 2FA system in some way. But no, if your password is so weak that it’s trivially crackable, such that 2FA becomes the only protection. Don’t overthink it—stick with strong passwords.)

As an example, consider this possibility for a LastPass master password: Tpmbialas/.19851955. It’s not entirely random, but it’s close and doesn’t use obvious patterns that cracking software could exploit. Let’s break it down:

• Tpmbialas comes from the first letter of the words in the movie The Phantom Menace and the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms, plus the first three letters of LastPass.
• /. plays on the name of the tech news site Slashdot to be memorable, and the characters are easily typed on both the iPhone and Mac keyboards.
• 19851955 will be easily remembered by fans of the movie Back to the Future, whose characters travel in time from 1985 back to 1955.

It’s highly secure—the How Secure Is My Password? site says it would take 1 quintillion years to crack, and there’s no way that even someone who knew your taste in movies and music could guess it (as long as you don’t tell them about your pattern).

One last thing to consider: is your password fun to type? Some key combinations probably roll off your fingers, whereas others will be prone to typos. Test your proposed password on both a Mac keyboard and your iPhone. If you hate typing it, tweak the characters until it’s better.

When you’re developing your own unique passwords that you must be able to remember and type, a strategy along these lines should serve you well. Just make sure to avoid dictionary words, repeated characters, and any password under 13 characters in length, all of which make passwords easier for cracking software to guess.

(Featured image by iStock.com/peshkov)

You know you can make albums and smart albums in Photos, and do searches to find photos that contain particular objects. But what if you want to separate photos from videos, identify which images in an album have been edited, or pick out just the ones you’ve favorited? For that, use Photos’ filters. On the Mac (below left), click the Showing menu in the upper-right corner, and in iOS and iPadOS (iPhone screens below right), tap the ••• button in the upper-right corner and tap Filter. Either way, you can choose Favorites, Edited, Photos, or  Videos to limit the items showing to that type. When you’re done, turn the filter off by choosing All Items.

(Featured image by iStock.com/metamorworks)

It’s common to want to share files, photos, and other data between your devices—or with friends and family. When the desired person or device isn’t nearby, it’s easiest to use Messages or Mail. But what if you want to move a file between two of your Macs, from your iPhone to your Mac, or to your friend who’s across the table? For transfers within immediate proximity, Apple provides AirDrop, a quick and easy way to move data between devices.

Make Sure AirDrop Is Ready to Go

First off, AirDrop requires both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so make sure both are enabled. If you use wired Ethernet on your Mac, enable Wi-Fi as well, but put the Wi-Fi service beneath the Ethernet service in System Preferences > Network (click the down-pointing arrow under the list and choose Set Service Order).

Next, make sure other devices can discover you. On the Mac, choose Go > AirDrop and, near the bottom of the Finder window that appears, choose Everyone from the pop-up menu. (If you’re out in public and random people keep trying to send you files, which would be weird, choose Contacts Only instead.) On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > General > AirDrop and select Everyone.

Send a File or Photo via AirDrop

Apple has integrated AirDrop into the standard sharing mechanism in macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, so sharing via AirDrop works the same as sharing via most other apps.

In the Finder on the Mac, the easiest approach may be to select AirDrop in a Finder window’s sidebar and then drag files to the icon representing the destination device (below left). You can also select one or more files and choose File > Share > AirDrop or Control-click them and choose Share > AirDrop, both of which present a dialog from which you can select the destination (below right). The right-hand dialog is also what you’ll see if you use the Share option in Photos or any other app.

On an iPhone or iPad, when you’re viewing the item you want to share, tap the Share button to bring up the Share sheet. You may be able to tap the AirDrop icon for the desired destination directly in the top row, but if it doesn’t show what you want, tap the general AirDrop icon in the second row to display the AirDrop screen with icons for all available destinations. Either way, tap the destination to send the file.

Receive Data via AirDrop

On the receiving side, AirDrop is utterly simple, particularly when transferring files between your devices, though the experience varies a little depending on the direction and file type.

• Receiving on a Mac: If you’re transferring between your own devices, you don’t need to do anything; the file will appear in the Downloads folder of the destination Mac. Files sent from other people will appear there too, but you’ll get a prompt asking you to accept or decline the file, and if you accept, an option to open it in the appropriate app.
  
• Receiving on an iPhone/iPad: Receiving on an iPhone or iPad is similar, with one additional step. Unless iOS/iPadOS knows where the file should go (images always import into Photos automatically, for instance), it prompts you with a list of apps that can open the file. Files you transfer between your own devices are accepted automatically; for files from other people, you must tap the Accept button first.
  

Troubleshooting

AirDrop has been around since Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011 and has seen significant updates since then. So if you had trouble getting AirDrop to work years ago, it’s worth revisiting the feature. That said, problems can still crop up:

• If a Mac doesn’t appear as an AirDrop destination, make sure it has Wi-Fi active. Ethernet is not sufficient. Also, if the Mac’s firewall is active, check that it allows incoming connections. Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Firewall Options and deselect “Block all incoming connections.”
• If an iPhone doesn’t appear as an AirDrop destination, make sure Personal Hotspot is turned off in Settings > Personal Hotspot.
• Because AirDrop relies on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, interference with either, or a separation between devices of more than 30 feet (9 meters), can cause performance and reliability to suffer.
• For best results, make sure you’re using recent Apple hardware running the latest versions of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Apple has improved AirDrop over the years, and it works significantly better than it did years ago. Technically, AirDrop requires a Mac introduced in 2012 (excluding the 2012 Mac Pro) or later running OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later. On the mobile device side, the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch must be running at least iOS 7.
• If you’re prompted to accept transfers between your own devices, that’s an indication that the devices aren’t logged in to the same iCloud account.
• Although AirDrop has no explicit size limit, very large files (over 500 MB) will take a long time to transfer and are more likely to fail due to network issues during the transfer.
• If you can’t find a transferred file in the destination Mac’s Downloads folder, remember that it retains its original creation and modification dates, so it might be sorting differently than you expect.

Next time you need to move data between nearby Apple devices, give AirDrop a try!

(Featured image by iStock.com/jroballo)

In cybercriminal circles, ransomware is all the rage. Once it has infected a computer, it encrypts all the files and then presents a ransom demand—pay up to get the decryption software necessary to recover the data.

Ransomware has been in the news all year, with the Colonial Pipeline attack in particular spending weeks in the headlines. Attacks rose 485% in 2020 and show no signs of abating. The amounts demanded by the attackers are increasing, too, with PC manufacturer Acer and Apple supplier Quanta both hit with $50 million demands. Worse, some ransomware attackers are adding an extortion component where they threaten to reveal confidential data if the victim doesn’t pay. It’s scary, we know.

First, the good news. Although there are several examples of ransomware that target the Mac, none of them have been particularly well done or (as far as we know) successful. Right now, the chances of Macs falling prey to ransomware are very low, and there’s no reason to panic.

However, complacency is dangerous. There’s a trend toward “ransomware as a service” (RaaS). The RaaS operators maintain the ransomware malware, offer a payment portal for victims, and provide “customer service” for victims who don’t know how to pay with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Affiliates spread the ransomware and split the revenues with the operators. It’s a tidy little cybercriminal enterprise, and separating the malware development and network penetration tasks has made it significantly easier for more criminals to leverage ransomware. It’s only a matter of time before they turn their attention to Macs.

For the most part, protecting your Macs from ransomware is no different than protecting against any number of other security problems. Follow this core advice:

• Keep Macs and apps up to date: Always install macOS and security updates, and keep other apps up to date. With every update, Apple addresses numerous security vulnerabilities, fixing the vast majority of them before attackers can exploit them with malware. Every so often, however, Apple’s security notes include this sentence: “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited.” That means there may be malware that targets that vulnerability; install such updates immediately!
  
• Use strong passwords with a password manager: You’ve heard it from us before, and you’ll hear it again, but it’s essential that everyone in your organization use strong, unique passwords through a password manager like Apple’s iCloud Keychain. Just one weak password could allow attackers to infiltrate a computer or server and install ransomware.
• Be suspicious of links and attachments: Ensure that everyone in your organization is careful about opening attachments or clicking links in email messages from unknown people or that seem off in some way. Phishing attacks are one of the primary ways of distributing malware. (If your group needs training in phishing awareness, contact us.)
  
• Never download pirated software! Even aside from the fact that it’s ethically problematic, the most recent piece of Mac ransomware—ThiefQuest—was initially found in a malicious installer purporting to be for the LittleSnitch network security utility (ironic, eh?). Get apps only from the developers’ official sites or the Mac App Store.
• Make frequent backups: Backups are essential so, even if you do fall prey to ransomware, you can restore data from before the infection point. The caveat is that some of your backups must be isolated from the Macs in question—some ransomware intentionally tries to encrypt or delete connected backups.
• Have anti-malware software: For the most part, if you’re careful about following the advice above, you’ll be fine. But it’s a good idea to have a current anti-malware app around and run it occasionally—if you don’t already have one, try the free version of Malwarebytes. If you—or your users—aren’t good about the basic precautions, you might want to run anti-malware software all the time or set up broader network protections.
  
• Have a disaster management plan: Every business should think about how it would react to a fire, flood, earthquake, or other disaster. When building a disaster management plan, be sure to include ransomware. How would you shut down infected systems, rebuild them from scratch, and restore uninfected files?

Setting up a backup strategy that protects against ransomware requires a little more thought. As noted, ransomware often tries to render backups useless in one way or another. You need to have versioned backups that allow you to restore from before the ransomware infection, and those backups need to be isolated from the computers and network being backed up. Techniques that help include:

• Isolate backup drives: Rotate multiple Time Machine drives, with at least one that’s always disconnected. However, this strategy assumes you’ll detect a ransomware infection before you’ve rotated all the drives. Ransomware could lie undetected for weeks or months before activating. Manually run current anti-malware software before connecting any backup drive.
• Use Internet backup: Set up an Internet backup system that will maintain versions of backed-up files, such as Backblaze with its Extended Version History feature. Retrospect 18 also supports object locking on cloud storage systems, which provides immutable storage. It ensures that no one—even someone who acquires root credentials—can delete the backups during the retention period.
• Consider tape backups: Long ago, tape backups were the go-to solution for network backups, but as the price-per-gigabyte of hard drives dropped precipitously and Internet backups became feasible, tape has largely fallen by the wayside. But tape backups are still an option. They can hold a lot of data and are easily kept offline in a separate location. Plus, some tape drives can even operate in a write-once, read-many (WORM) mode that guarantees data can’t be erased or overwritten. Tape requires more human interaction than other backup methods, but it’s still a cost-effective way to protect hundreds of terabytes of data against ransomware.

Again, there’s no reason to panic about ransomware, but if it could significantly damage your business, you should take steps to reduce the chance of getting hit and ensure that you could restore your data if your computers were to get infected. There is no single approach that’s ideal for everyone, but we can help you think about what’s involved and develop a strategy that balances protection, cost, and effort.

(Featured image by iStock.com/chainatp)