SEE: Identity theft protection policy (TechRepublic Premium)Īs more security experts began examining the problem, a number of other thorny issues cropped up. “In the aftermath of the OCSP responder outage, and the dust settling on the macOS Big Sur release, there are a lot of folks reasonably asking if they can trust Apple to be in the loop of deciding what apps should or should not run on their Macs. This is where you have to make a business decision as to whether or not you trust Apple to be benevolent or not,” Vachon wrote. This does put a lot of policy control in Apple’s hands. “If Apple finds that an app they issued a certificate to is actually malware, they can rapidly revoke this certificate and prevent the malware from running, even on machines it has already installed itself on. After all, a computer needs to work offline, too.” Of course, if macOS couldn’t reach the OCSP responder, it would go about its merry way launching an app. Vachon said that in an effort to protect users and customers from malware, Apple uses an OCSP responder so that “at every launch of an app, macOS would dutifully check if the certificate used by the signer is still valid, per the OCSP responder. Security expert Phil Vachon explained what happened on his blog Security Embedded, writing that an Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) responder checking certificates of each and every application was to blame after an Apple server went down. 12 and hours later, hundreds of people took to social media to complain about problems they were having with certain applications on their Macs. Security incident response: Critical steps for cyberattack recovery (TechRepublic Premium)Īpple released macOS Big Sur on Nov.
The 10 best antivirus products you should consider for your businessĨ enterprise password managers and the companies that will love them The release stated the process is part of its efforts to protect users from malware. 12.Īpple was forced to issue a statement Monday on its data collection policies after the release last week of Big Sur led to complaints of slow systems, which morphed into a larger debate about privacy on Macs and iPhones. Apple announced at its November 2020 event that macOS 11 Big Sur would arrive Nov.
Users took to social media to complain about slow systems with one report pointing to an OCSP responder as the culprit.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave us a comment at the end of the article.Security experts level criticism at Apple after Big Sur launch issues If an Apple service has just failed and is therefore not available, this is indicated with a red dot. Then the corresponding service is currently in the maintenance state or overloaded.īelow the list of services you get a detailed schedule where you can also check the status of past days and hours. If there are problems with the respective Apple server, a red box appears instead of the green box. You can see if the respective service is available from a green box.
The current time of the status is shown on the upper screen. Check Apple server statusĪll Apple services are clearly displayed on the system status page provided by Apple. The Apple server status can of course also be used to check the availability of iCloud services, Game Center or Apple Music.
For example, if you try in vain to install the latest iOS update on your own smartphone or tablet.
Only when you can rule out an error at Apple, it may be due to your device or the respective app.įinding out if Apple’s servers are available can often be helpful. Check if Apple’s servers are available if you have problems with an app.