gatekeeper

Apple nudging developers to get apps Gatekeeper-ready

Apple's release of its Mountain Lion software isn't until "late summer," though today the company began nudging developers to get their software up to speed with its new security feature.

In an e-mail sent to developers this afternoon and forwarded on to CNET, Apple urged developers to start signing their apps and other software with their Apple Developer ID certificate so they will get by Gatekeeper, a security feature that's built into Apple's next OS and designed to keep malware at bay.

"Gatekeeper is a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion that … Read more

Jeff Bezos: Web gatekeepers, don't slow us down

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has delivered his annual letter to shareholders, and he let customers do most of the talking. Bezos, however, distanced Amazon from rivals in the Web platform wars and noted that the company's self-service enables innovation to flourish.

In some respects, Bezos' riff reflected the Thousand Points of Light speech from President George H.W. Bush. The idea is simple: Enable a bunch of folks to throw ideas up against a wall and do good work and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how many folks shine.

Bezos quoted users of the Kindle Direct Publishing systems (… Read more

Security experts: Apple did Mac OS X Gatekeeper right

Many people complain about Apple controlling what apps can run on the iPhone, but with Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the company has struck the right balance between security and freedom, experts say.

"Users can opt to turn this off and allow any software to be installed with the click of a button," said Dino Dai Zovi, chief technology officer at security firm Trail of Bits. "There'll be no need to jailbreak your Mac."

Apple unveiled details today about Mac OS X v.10.8, the latest version of its Macintosh operating system which is … Read more

What Gatekeeper in OS X 10.8 means for Mac security

In recent years Apple's OS X platform has seen an increase in malware, which, while minimal in comparison to increases for other platforms, has proven that no platform is invulnerable to attacks.

With the malware scene making some inroads into OS X, Apple has taken some steps to protect Mac users from it, primarily with the introduction of the XProtect feature in Snow Leopard, which detects the presence of known Mac malware signatures in newly downloaded files.

In the current release of OS X (version 10.7 Lion), Apple did not advance its malware security effort much, and Mac … Read more