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Apple Updates Malware Definitions to Protect Against Botnet Threat Coordinated Via Reddit

Thanks again.

My main partition updated itself but I have a small utilities volume which is not running very often or long and the manual update is useful.
 
Any suggestions how to get Gatekeeper up to date on my rarely used partition?:
 

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Mike Boreham said:
Any suggestions how to get Gatekeeper up to date on my rarely used partition?:
Click to expand...

Easier than waiting for someone to post a direct link, you can run this command in terminal:
Code: 
sudo softwareupdate --background-critical
When prompted, enter your admin password, and Xprotect will be updated after a few seconds.
 
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chrfr said:
Easier than waiting for someone to post a direct link, you can run this command in terminal:
Code: 
sudo softwareupdate --background-critical
When prompted, enter your admin password, and Xprotect will be updated after a few seconds.
Click to expand...

Thanks I will certainly try that in future, but note that in my screenshot above, Xprotect had run for 12th Dec update, but Gatekeeper was still in October.

Does the Terminal command update both?
 
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Mike Boreham said:
Thanks I will certainly try that in future, but note that in my screenshot above, Xprotect had run for 12th Dec update, but Gatekeeper was still in October.

Does the Terminal command update both?
Click to expand...
It does update both.
 
chrfr said:
Easier than waiting for someone to post a direct link, you can run this command in terminal:
Code: 
sudo softwareupdate --background-critical
When prompted, enter your admin password, and Xprotect will be updated after a few seconds.
Click to expand...

That may speed up the update if your system is going to update itself correctly. It doesn't work on my system which fails to update.

----------
tywebb13 said:
OK. I won't bother posing the links anymore.
Click to expand...

I find your links useful.

And I don't consider Apple to be unknown.
 
tywebb13 said:
I found chrfr's post to be useful because it meant (or I thought it meant) I wouldn't have to bother posting the links anymore.

However there may be times when his command won't work and so I've changed my mind. I WILL continue to post the links here for xprotect. (Not so sure about the gatekeeper ones though).
Click to expand...

Glad to see this tywebb13!

I am grateful for chrfr's Terminal suggestion, and I will certainly try it and hope it works. However I can't help feeling that if it was that easy it would be a well known solution to the problem which I have seen discussed in a number of threads, here and elsewhere.

EDIT...I can see posting the links each time could be tedious for you, so maybe you can post us the method whereby you obtain the links?
 
Mike Boreham said:
Glad to see this tywebb13!

I am grateful for chrfr's Terminal suggestion, and I will certainly try it and hope it works. However I can't help feeling that if it was that easy it would be a well known solution to the problem which I have seen discussed in a number of threads, here and elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Well, for now it is that easy, but for most people, the automatic update process works fine on its own.
There had been issues where Macs which were pointed to a private software update server, as is common in business and education, would not get the Xprotect and gatekeeper updates automatically. I've instituted a different system to get these updates installed on the systems I manage so I can't say for sure whether that's been resolved as of now.
The challenge with invoking the updates through softwareupdate manually (as well as downloading and installing the packages manually) is that these are undocumented and unsupported means of getting important security updates. Apple has a tendency to break these sorts of things.
 
chrfr said:
Well, for now it is that easy, but for most people, the automatic update process works fine on its own.
There had been issues where Macs which were pointed to a private software update server, as is common in business and education, would not get the Xprotect and gatekeeper updates automatically. I've instituted a different system to get these updates installed on the systems I manage so I can't say for sure whether that's been resolved as of now.
The challenge with invoking the updates through softwareupdate manually (as well as downloading and installing the packages manually) is that these are undocumented and unsupported means of getting important security updates. Apple has a tendency to break these sorts of things.
Click to expand...

I tried the Terminal method on a small OS which only boots occasionally and for a short while (so doesn't get much time for the intended process to happen).

Unfortunately it didn't work. As the screenshot shows Gatekeeper stayed at 10th Dec version.

I tried three times, allowing about 15 mins each time for the SU to happen.

Is the Terminal response as expected?

Thanks.
 

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UPDATE After trying as above, I immediately rebooted the small OS and checked versions again, and it was at the 17th Dec version.

Is that how it is supposed to work? i.e. the Terminal instruction forces the update next reboot, rather than immediately after the instruction?

Just noticed that although date has changed from 10th to 17th, it is still version 54??
 

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