Arin Waichulis

Since Apple launched its M-series processors and recently the C1 cellular modem, the company has been slowly but surely moving toward complete chip independence. Apple is even working on its own Bluetooth and Wi-Fi solution, which is reportedly coming with new Home products and the iPhone 17 lineup in the Fall.

One obvious benefit of developing chips in-house is energy efficiency. Apple toated this with the introduction of Apple Silicon what feels like a hundred years ago, and with its latest C1 modem, which gives the iPhone 16e nearly 20% better battery life over the flagship iPhone 16. While improved battery life is certainly appealing, there are less obvious and possibly more significant benefits of Apple having end-to-end control over both the software and hardware components.

This is Security Bite, where I share insights on data privacy, vulnerabilities, or emerging threats within Apple’s vast ecosystem of over 2 billion active devices each week.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

I’ve recently fallen into the rabbit hole of lesser-known Terminal features. These past months, I covered everything from enabling Touch ID for sudo authentication to cleaning up public Wi-Fi connections stored on your Mac. But this week, I want to share even more neat features you probably didn’t know Terminal could do. These can be helpful if you’re an everyday Mac user or managing an enterprise fleet. In this edition of Security Bite, allow me to elevate your command line prowess further.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

If you’re reading this week’s Security Bite on your desktop, look closely at your browser’s address bar. Notice how the main (root) domain is darker or black, while the rest of the URL is a lighter grey? This is not an accident — it’s actually a subtle psychological trick called salience bias. This little design choice has protected users from phishing attacks for over a decade.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3 for short. Since its inception in 2000, the organization has released an annual report detailing trends based on the thousands of cybercrime complaints it receives daily from victims. This week, the FBI released its 2024 Internet Crime Report, revealing a record $16.6 billion in reported losses—a 33% increase and “a new record for losses reported to IC3.”

If there’s one thing this report highlights best, it’s that humans are more vulnerable than machines.

Ever wonder what malware macOS can detect and remove without help from third-party software? Apple continuously adds new malware detection rules to Mac’s built-in XProtect suite. While most rule names (signatures) are obfuscated, with a bit of reversing engineering, security researchers can map them to their common industry names.

In this edition of 9to5Mac Security Bite, I revisit a story I started working on in May of 2024. Because Apple is continuously adding new modules to its XProtect suite to combat the latest malware trends, I suspect this column will continue to update over time. Here’s what malware your Mac can detect and remove on its own:

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

I’ve recently found myself down the rabbit hole of lesser-known Terminal features. These past months, I covered everything from enabling Touch ID for sudo authentication to cleaning up public Wi-Fi connections stored on your Mac. But this past week, I journeyed deeper and found even more neat features you probably didn’t know Terminal could do, and I’m not talking ping command here. In this edition of Security Bite, allow me to elevate your command line prowess further.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

In this week’s Security Bite, I’m taking it back over 20 years to the launch of Gmail in 2004–because that’s how long its little-known plus addressing (aliasing) feature has quietly existed. It was originally created to help with filtering and keeping inboxes tidy long before spam became what it is today. Google never really promoted it, so most people still don’t realize it’s a thing. But over the years, it’s become popular among privacy-minded folks to track which online services, subscriptions, etc., are selling email addresses to other companies or leaking them.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

For years, macOS security developers and researchers have urged Apple to add TCC events to the Endpoint Security (ES) framework. Doing so would allow them to directly trace a TCC request to the specific application (or malware) that triggered it. This could allow third-party security tools to offer real-time protection around permission requests.

The good news? Apple is finally making this happen in macOS 15.4.

The bad news? It’s rough around the edges right now.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

For years, Apple offered its built-in Keychain password management tool tucked away in the Settings app, allowing users to automatically generate and save passwords—but quickly managing specific logins could often feel tedious. With iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, Apple introduced the standalone Passwords app in an effort to make credential management more convenient. Still, many are skeptical about whether the new app has enough features to compete with paid password managers—or if that’s even Apple’s goal.

In iOS 18, Apple spun off its Keychain password management tool—previously only tucked away in Settings—into a standalone app called Passwords. It was the company’s first move at making credential management more convenient for users. It’s now been revealed that a serious HTTP bug left Passwords users vulnerable to phishing attacks for nearly three months, from the initial release of iOS 18 until the patch in iOS 18.2.

Whether you own a Mac personally or manage a fleet with enterprise endpoint software like Mosyle, there’s a good chance you have scores of old unsecured wireless networks saved—Wi-Fi points that don’t require authentication. Common places where users connect and save these networks could be Starbucks (often “Starbucks WiFi”) and airports (like “Airport Guest”).

So, the risk? Attackers can exploit this by setting up rogue access points with the same SSIDs, tricking your device into connecting automatically. To prevent spoofing attacks like this, you can automate the removal of common SSIDs using the following script below!

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

One of the greatest benefits of Touch ID on Mac is rarely having to type your password when making purchases, signing into apps, and, of course, unlocking the device. It might be ancient technology to the iPhone at this point, but it continues to be a default luxury on Mac. If you frequent Terminal, you’ll be glad to know you can also authenticate as administrator with Touch ID for all the sudo goodness with one tap.

Imagine you’re on your way to dinner, walking down a decently busy street during the day. You’re using your new iPhone 16 Pro for directions before, out of nowhere, a masked individual on an e-bike whips around to your side and snatches your Desert Titanium baby and zooms off. All in seconds. This sounds like a one-off insane situation, but this is precisely what happened to Dimitar Stanimiroff last week in London, England. And he’s not alone…

The most recent statistics say a phone is stolen on average every 6 minutes in London, or about 64,000 annually. It’s so common that the City of London Police deployed special task forces to snuff out these gangs and even had to publish a blog post explaining how to protect your mobile device in public.

Over the years, Apple has made impressive strides in implementing anti-theft measures like Activation Lock and inadvertent “parts pairing” rules. These features and others are meant to deter thieves and minimize situations like Stanimiroff’s. Is it enough?

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

In a Bluetooth Impersonation Attack (or BIAS), hackers can exploit weaknesses in the Bluetooth protocol to impersonate a trusted device. “BOSE QC Headphones” in the Bluetooth menu could be a low-orbiting ion canon waiting for an end-user to connect to it before unleashing all sorts of damage.

In this week’s Security Bite, I will show you how hackers can use Flipper Zero to send sneaky keystrokes to a Mac by connecting it to a fake Bluetooth device. This isn’t going to be a complete tutorial since there are tons of guides out there already. Instead, I want to point out how easy it is to pull this off and maybe make you a bit more paranoid.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

Tired of hearing about DeepSeek yet? The China-based LLM chatbot beached itself onto the scene this week, dominating the tech news cycle and even taking #1 on the App Store, where it still sits as of writing. However, its rapid popularity has led to a wave of new phishing campaigns, investment scams, and macOS malware disguised as real DeepSeek applications. Here’s the latest.

You’re reading 9to5Mac Security Bite, where each week, I share insights on data privacy, discuss the latest vulnerabilities, and shed light on emerging threats within Apple’s vast ecosystem of over 2 billion active devices.

On this day 41 years ago, Apple’s first Macintosh went on sale, just two days after being introduced to the world during a commercial break in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. Although “1984” became a cultural phenomenon and a watershed moment for product launches, Apple’s Board of Directors was against it from the start. Here’s how the legendary ad almost didn’t air…

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

Last weekend, Google was found again serving a malicious website at the top of Search as a sponsored result. This isn’t the first time Google Ads has approved websites with embedded malware; in fact, the first instance of this goes back to 2007 when the platform (then called Google AdWords) was promoting fake antivirus software widely referred to as “scareware” at the time. But how, in 2025, can Google, with its DeepMind and deeper pockets, still allow this to happen? How are hackers outsmarting it?

This week, I want to briefly discuss this new campaign and how they were likely able to pull it off.

Security Bite is a weekly security-focused column on 9to5Mac. Each week, I share insights on data privacy, discuss the latest vulnerabilities, and shed light on emerging threats within Apple’s vast ecosystem of over 2 billion active devices.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

Between the rapid news cycle around the TikTok ban, the vulnerability found in the iPhone’s USB-C port controller, and the overruling of net neutrality protections (again), it’s felt like a rollercoaster of a month so far. But this week, I want to step back and share what’s on my growing reading list for this year, as well as some other resources that I recommend for those just starting their Apple security journey in 2025.

Security Bite is a weekly security-focused column on 9to5Mac. Each week, I share insights on data privacy, discuss the latest vulnerabilities, and shed light on emerging threats within Apple’s vast ecosystem of over 2 billion active devices.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

A new report from Check Point Research details how a new variant of the infamous Banshee stealer malware from Russian-speaking cybercriminals takes a page from Apple’s own security practices to evade detection. The malware remained undetected for over two months by cleverly incorporating the same encryption methods as Mac’s XProtect antivirus detection suite.

If you’re an avid reader of Security Bite, you’ve heard me say (more than once) that malware stealers, usually through malware-as-a-service (MaaS) business models, are currently the largest threat to Mac users. They’re destructive, targeting your iCloud Keychain passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, sensitive information from files, and even system passwords like a stealthy low-orbiting ion canon. Cybercriminals will often embed this malicious code in seemingly legitimate applications as a ploy to infect machines.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

I’ve been a CleanMyMac subscriber for nearly a decade, and I’ve been truly impressed by the app’s recent focus on providing Mac users with simple yet effective malware detection and prevention features. So, when MacPaw offered to fly me out to Kyiv, Ukraine, to meet and interview the folks leading Moonlock, its cybersecurity division, I jumped at the opportunity.

This interview is divided into three parts: About Moonlock, the technology behind the Moonlock Engine, and what’s planned for the future.

Disclosure: Ukraine is a country at war. Many members of the Moonlock team also aid in the defense of their country, so false names may be used below to protect their identity. Some parts of the transcript were edited for clarity.

9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

The Mac-infecting Realst crypto stealer is back. It’s been over a year since the malware emerged as a tool for cybercriminals to drain cryptocurrency from wallets and steal other credentials. It was initially disseminated through fake blockchain games, as I reported at the time. However, it now appears to be directed at Web3 developers in a targeted spear-phishing campaign.