What's new in LockRattler 4.37
May 2, 2023
- If you still prefer using LockRattler to SilentKnight, there’s a chance that it will crash if your Mac is an Intel model without a T2 chip, particularly if it’s running macOS Ventura 13.3.1.
- This is because one of the features in macOS that it relies on is the command tool eficheck. This was introduced in High Sierra to check the integrity and currency of EFI firmware, but isn’t used on Intel Macs with a T2 chip, or on Apple silicon Macs. It appears that eficheck has now served its purpose, and is in the process of going away. At present, it might have a misbehaving code signature, and crash when run, which will in turn crash LockRattler. You can check that using the command
- /usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck/eficheck --integrity-check
- where you must be careful to ensure there’s a double hyphen before the option.
- As the behaviour of eficheck is now unpredictable, I have built a new version of LockRattler which no longer uses it.
New in LockRattler 4.35 (Jun 20, 2022)
- The currently installed version of XProtect Remediator is now displayed after that of XProtect, at the upper left. The last update shown in red to the right of that is the more recent of the two, XProtect data files and the Remediator app. The Remediator version is also written to the app’s text report.
New in LockRattler 4.32 (Jan 31, 2022)
- This update fixes a bug kindly reported by Jim, in which the SSV on some M1 series Macs could be incorrectly reported as being disabled. It also addresses the problem of reporting Platform Security status on M1 Macs which aren’t using English as their primary language.
New in LockRattler 4.31 (Sep 3, 2021)
- Added support for Monterey
- Improved detection of system updates for later versions of macOS.
New in LockRattler 4.30 (Dec 2, 2020)
- Added support for Apple Silicon Mac Platform Security
- Added support for checking the SSV in Big Sur.
New in LockRattler 4.29 (Dec 2, 2020)
- Reworked logic catering for T2 and Apple Silicon models
- Minor tweaks to Help menu, new page for firmware updates for 11.0.
New in LockRattler 4.28 (Dec 2, 2020)
- Added reporting of Apple Silicon firmware version (iBoot) and changed title.
New in LockRattler 4.27 (Dec 2, 2020)
- Added option for downloads only.
New in LockRattler 4.26 (Dec 2, 2020)
- Final tweaks for Big Sur
- Universal App.
New in LockRattler 4.25 (Jul 1, 2020)
- Fixed (at last, I hope) problems with updating bundle versions after installing updates.
- Added support for Big Sur.
New in LockRattler 4.24 (Oct 18, 2019)
- Added support for KEXT exclusion extension for Catalina.
New in LockRattler 4.23 (Oct 14, 2019)
- Changed handling of GKE bundle info for Catalina
- Updated Help book for GKE, Catalina and more
- Added size and position saving for windows
- Adjusted main window controls and outputs
- Various minor improvements, particularly for Catalina
- Ported to Swift 5.1 in Xcode 11.1.
New in LockRattler 4.22 (Oct 14, 2019)
- Added new paths for Catalina beta 4
- Added macOS version to saved report
- Added new blog versions page for Catalina
- Updated Help book.
New in LockRattler 4.21 (Jun 21, 2019)
- Disabled KEXT block for Catalina
- Tweaked system updates for Catalina
- Added automatic check for updates.
New in LockRattler 4.20 (May 23, 2019)
- Changed window title to give current macOS version
- Added code to perform signature check on each launch.
New in LockRattler 4.19 (May 23, 2019)
- Added LockRattler Support command
- Ported to Swift 5 and Xcode 10.2.
New in LockRattler 4.18 (May 23, 2019)
- Added checks to see if results have changed, and display in red if they have
- Greatly extended preferences file to store previous results
- Updated Help book accordingly.
New in LockRattler 4.17 (Dec 10, 2018)
- Offers default report file name incorporating date and time
- Datestamp in report changed to the time at which checks were last run.
New in LockRattler 4.16 (Dec 10, 2018)
- Reports TCC updates correctly
- Now reports No security update installed if none has been installed since last macOS
- Update
- Removed terminating ) from iBridge firmware version.
New in LockRattler 4.15 (Nov 6, 2018)
- Detects T2-equipped systems correctly (at last).
New in LockRattler 4.14 (Nov 6, 2018)
- Detects systems which lack eficheck tool
- Those with T2 chips should not try running eficheck, but give iBridge firmware version
- Instead
- Added EFI firmware versions link to Help menu.
New in LockRattler 4.13 (Nov 6, 2018)
- Added two EFI firmware checks
- Tweaked macOS update detection to find 10.14.1 update properly
- Ported to Swift 4.2.1 and Xcode 10.1.
New in LockRattler 4.12 (Oct 18, 2018)
- Added TCC version for Mojave
- Revised Help book and docs.
New in LockRattler 4.11 (Sep 21, 2018)
- Built with Xcode 10.0 release and notarized
- Fixed (I hope) updating of bundle versions when refreshed
- Minor cosmetics in the window.
New in LockRattler 4.10 (Aug 30, 2018)
- Adds a new test to check if the firmware password has been enabled. It has also been notarized again, for your improved protection. The layout of its app window has been improved, as has the content of its text reports.
- For those already using Mojave betas, and anyone intending to upgrade to Mojave when it is released, it has two additional improvements. Its Help book, documentation, and new Privacy settings command in the Help menu explain that it doesn’t require any adjustments to Mojave’s privacy settings to work fully. When running on a Mojave beta or release version, its Check blog button now links to a new dedicated page for Mojave systems.
- Changelog:
- built with Xcode 10ß6 and notarized
- added firmware password check
- added Privacy settings window to Help
- minor improvements in window layout, and text file output
- added Mojave page for checking with blog.
New in LockRattler 4.9 (Aug 1, 2018)
- Built with Xcode 10ß5
- Notarized for macOS Mojave; as the code is unchanged from 4.8, still displays that
- version number in its window title, etc., although Get Info and its About box show 4.9.
New in LockRattler 4.8 (Aug 1, 2018)
- Replaced IB WebView with WKWebView in view of deprecation of the former
- Tidied Tooltips.
New in LockRattler 4.7.1 (Jul 27, 2018)
- fixes a signing issue with 4.7.
New in LockRattler 4.7 (Jul 27, 2018)
- added feature to check log privacy setting (Sierra and later)
- reorganized window
- added Mojave as a ‘supported’ system for macOS updates.
New in LockRattler 4.6 (Jul 10, 2018)
- Fixes typos in the Help book and the PDF documentation;
- Ported to Swift 4.2 and built with the latest Xcode 10ß release.
New in LockRattler 4.5 (Jun 21, 2018)
- Fixes a small problem when running in Dark Mode, and updates its Help book.
- Fixes a bug installing named updates:
- Version 4.2b1 of my free app LockRattler brought a new feature: the ability to install specific named updates. This is to help those who may have other pending updates, when a security data update is pushed. Users then need to be able to manually install the updates that they want, but to leave those which they don’t want to install yet.
- This is a very difficult feature to test fully, as it relies on the testing Mac having security updates pending and not yet installed – something which doesn’t happen very often. A couple of people reported problems getting the feature to work, though. When Apple released two security updates yesterday, I was at last able to test this properly, across three different versions of macOS too. I discovered that it didn’t work at all, for which I apologize.
- It turned out that the softwareupdate command options which LockRattler relies on – which is that documented in its man page, and even given as an example – don’t work for security updates. In Sierra and later, instead of using the command
- softwareupdate -i item
- to install the package named item, for security updates you must use the undocumented
- softwareupdate -i --include-config-data item
- instead, or Apple’s servers will deny that the update exists.
- There remains one minor issue which I still haven’t been able to solve, though. When you click on the new Refresh button, although the update installation details next to the white text boxes are correctly updated, the contents of those white text boxes are not refreshed. The Refresh feature was added so that you can check that updates have been installed correctly, without having to quit LockRattler and open it again.
- My source code is correct in handling this, and I cannot discover why macOS is returning outdated information about the security data. However, as the text next to those boxes does change to reflect updates, I am leaving this as it is for the moment. I will return and get to the bottom of this problem in a future update.
New in LockRattler 4.4 (Jun 17, 2018)
- Compatible with Mojave beta, and works better in Dark Mode.
New in LockRattler 4.3 (Jun 11, 2018)
- added Refresh button
- made main window fixed size, as growing window was purposeless
- updated Help book to clarify updates with respect to ‘silent’ security updates.
New in LockRattler 4.2 (Jun 11, 2018)
- added Check blog button and browser.
New in LockRattler 4.1 (Jun 11, 2018)
- Removed Trigger background check when running on El Capitan due to errors
- New app icon, thanks to blackspike.com
- Updated Help book and copyright info.