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Category Archives: Networking
How to: Securely configure Mac OS X for network packet sniffing with Wireshark
If you’re anything like me, you often run into a computer problem or five that could be diagnosed more quickly by taking a peek at activity on the network. The best general purpose tool for inspecting network activity has gotta be Wireshark. It’s an industry-standard, open source packet sniffer that you can use for fun and profit. But on many Mac OS X builds, the default configuration for packet capturing is less secure than it ought to be. Here’s how to fix that on your Mac.
One Minute Mac Tip: Open multiple Tor circuits in the new TorBrowserBundle 3.5 for Mac OS X
Earlier this month, the Tor Project released a new version of the Tor Browser Bundle, an easy-to-use anonymity-enhancing Web browser. In a previous post, I discussed how to use the Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) for other applications on your computer, such as Safari and even Mail.app. This post has updated instructions for doing some of …
HowTo: Use Tor for all network traffic by default on Mac OS X
Recently, I had the gratifying experience of doing some political work that earned me a bunch of hate mail and some threats of physical violence. It had already gotten to the point where I was being harassed by a self-described “Internet stalker” who would call up venues I went to and get the employees to …
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How to spoof your MAC address on Mac OS X (for reals)
Update: For users of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion), a much easier solution called SpoofMAC exists as a set of Python scripts. (via) One of the oddities of Apple’s Mac OS X platform is that some things that should be easy are obtusely difficult, and remarkably so. Changing the hostname of …
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One Minute Mac Tip: Sniffing Wi-Fi traffic and capturing packets with the built-in airport utility
Many Mac OS X users lament the lack of sophisticated network analysis tools, often prevalent and seemingly prolific on Linux systems. What many don’t know is that Mac OS X comes with a built-in command-line tool to do all sorts of nifty things with Wi-Fi networks, from packet capture (traffic sniffing) to scanning nearby networks’ …
How to use HTTP Basic Authentication with git
Coming right on the heels of my need to set up a git repository on shared hosts, I next wanted to see if I could use HTTP authentication for such a repository. Of course, HTTP authentication is an extremely insecure protocol, but it typically is enough to dissuade the casual user (such as Googlebot) from …
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One minute Mac tip: Create the illusion that Bonjour works over a VPN
If you’re a Mac user who often uses VPN connections, you’ll notice one very disappointing thing about connecting to your corporate or personal network over such tunneled connections: typically, Bonjour-style addresses (such as “computer-name.local”) don’t work. This is because multicast DNS (or mDNS) doesn’t work over a tunnel. Though there are ways to get it …
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One minute Mac tip: Restore Bonjour’s “.local” addresses
Lately, there have been a string of networking problems with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard reported by sites such as MacFixIt. One of most common symptoms is the loss of Bonjour’s “.local” addresses. So, for instance, if you have a machine named “Perseus” then you could address that machine by the hostname “Perseus.local” instead of …
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Sharing your Windows XP Virtual Machine’s Internet connection with your Mac OS X host operating system using VMware Fusion
In some situations, like the odd one I now find myself in, the only way to get Internet connectivity is to use a solution that requires a fair bit of maneuvering. In my situation, I have temporarily obtained a Vodafone 3G mobile card. Unfortunately, the Vodafone Mobile Connect software for Mac OS X as of …