I have a couple websites I limit access to with apache .htaccess files. I also use Google Chrome on my iPhone, and for some reason, it was being blocked even though I specifically allow my internal subnet. Looking at the logs, I saw the request was coming from IP 66.249.84.145, or google-proxy-66-249-84-145.google.com. Ah! There’s a Data Saver feature in Chrome on iOS (guessing it’s there for Chrome on Android too). The iOS Chrome uses a Google proxy to download the webpage, do some compression/minification/etc, and then send it to the phone. They call this “Data Compression Proxy“. According to the App, it saves me about 20% of my data (which, I don’t care about when on Wifi, but on cell, it’s not a bad idea).
Annoying Mac Malware/Trojan
Just a quick post since I just had to clean this damn software off a computer. It’s Genieo/MacInstaller. On the computer it was on, it kept downloading, and mounting a DMG with an Installer on it saying “Double click here” (see picture). No, that doesn’t seem sketchy.
The best info on uninstalling it I’ve seen is here. Obviously, if you don’t know what you’re doing, I wouldn’t suggest blindly following these instructions, but I don’t see anything that could go horribly wrong from any of this. Just make sure you’re deleting what it says to delete, and not something else… Mac’s are pretty resilient, but if you delete some things, it will cause issues.
In case you do see this, it looks like the primary vector this is spread by is fake Adobe Flash Player installers. Never, ever, just click a link asking to install/download Flash Player, or Java, or anything like that. Go through the effort of Googling or typing the address of the actual vendor (Adobe, Oracle, etc), and download from there. If your Flash player downloads from “www.thisistotallylegit.com”, it’s probably not.
Anyway, good luck, and death to Mac (and any other) Malware.
Mac Mini 2009 SSD Upgrade
Back in July 2011 one of the stock Western Digital HD’s in my 2009 Mac Mini Server went out, so I bit the bullet and purchased two new Western Digital Scopio Blacks (both 500GB), and RAID1’d them together. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and my RAID goes offline. I run several days of block checking, and find that the upper drive has gone out (which, I’ll get replaced by WD, but at this point, I’m looking to replace both drives… and I generally don’t trust refurbished drives). Anyway, figuring two new 500GB drives would cost about $100, I started looking at alternatives, and quickly found the Crucial M500 240GB SSD for $140 through Amazon. I then wouldn’t RAID drives together, I would just put OS/Services on the SSD, then use the still functional 500GB Western Digital drive as storage for larger files (downloads, backups, etc).