One change that has found its way into MacOS Sierra that has been impacting a number of people is the removal of the user’s ability to easy exempt applications from Gatekeeper’s scrutiny. This is an issue when a user tries to open application is not signed by an “approved” developer. They will be prompted with a warning similar to this one:
Author Archives: Josh
Introduction to Regular Expressions (Regex)
Fixing Slow SMB Speeds in OSX
After recently upgrading to OS X 10.12, I noticed some SMB file transfers were taking a lot longer than usual. Instead of the normal 100MB/sec transfer speeds I typically see between my Mac Mini and my Synology NAS on a gigabit (wired) network, I was seeing something closer to 30MB/sec.
Turns out I’m not the only one with this issue. Searching Google for “10.12 slow smb” returns pages full of results of people reporting the same issue. Most of them say “switch to AFP and the problem goes away.” That’s nice but I specifically use SMB because I have a share that’s accessed by Linux, Mac, and Windows – and so SMB is the right solution to keep file naming consistent.
The issue seems to come down to Apple’s SMB forcing default enabling of “client signing” which ruins performance. Continue reading
The Basics of Cryptography
Synology RT 1900ac Firewall Problems
I recently made the decision to ditch my old Sonicwall TZ 205 in favor of the new Synology RT 1900ac. As a security guy, this seems like an odd decision, but since I was not paying for any of the advanced Sonicwall services, it really just came down to convenience and support. I run a Synology 1815+ at home and love everything about it, so I wanted to give their brand new router/firewall a shot. Unfortunately, I’ve run into some very strange firewall behavior that I’ve been trying to work through with their support team.
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