macintoshJake

Q: Is it still secure to use Snow Leopard?

Hi,

 

I use a 2008 MacBook running Snow Leopard for audio recording work. I have to use the old MacBook and Snow Leopard because of compatibility issues with drivers for some of my recording equipment.

 

Since Apple has stopped supporting Snow Leopard, is it still secure to use it?

 

Thank you,

 

- Jake

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8), White

Posted on Feb 20, 2015 11:34 AM

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Q: Is it still secure to use Snow Leopard?

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  • by rccharles,

    rccharles rccharles Feb 22, 2015 6:53 PM in response to macintoshJake
    Level 6 (8,506 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Feb 22, 2015 6:53 PM in response to macintoshJake

    While I have read there are ways around...

    I recommend that you get a littlesnitch. littlesnitch will track your Web traffic and tell you which applications are sending data from your computer. Be sure to run it awhile because it will trigger a number of alerts. In trail mode, it will run for three hours per boot for a about a month.

    http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

     

     

    Make a full backup of your machine.  Should you ever get hacked, you can restore your machine from the backup.

    I suggest you get an external firewire harddrive and clone your startup disk.

     

    Carbon Copy Cloner will copy your startup drive to an external  firewire drive.  You can boot from the external drive to verify that you have a good clone. When you upgrade your existing startup drive, you can at any time boot from your external drive and go back to your existing system.

    http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

     

    SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 23, 2015 9:41 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 23, 2015 9:41 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

    QuickTimeKirk,

     

    Thanks for the tip. I hadn't considered that using an older version of Safari could be an issue. It's too bad though, as I generally prefer Safari over other browsers; with Firefox being my second choice.

     

    - Jake

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 23, 2015 9:45 PM in response to thomas_r.
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 23, 2015 9:45 PM in response to thomas_r.

    Tom,

     

    I don't think that anyone has any reason to attack me.

     

    - Jake

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 23, 2015 10:04 PM in response to WZZZ
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 23, 2015 10:04 PM in response to WZZZ

    WIZZZ,

     

    Thanks for the tip about Apple Mail. I now use a different client. Firefox is my second choice for a browser after Safari; and I personally don't care for Chrome. Although, I do like some of Google's other products (I hope I can say that on Apple's forum )

     

    As far as the second partition goes, I actually already have a partition with Lion (not Mountain Lion) installed on it. However, my 2008 MacBook performs much smoother with Snow Leopard. I am considering trying Yosemite, maybe from an external drive, on my MacBook just for fun; I have 4 GB of ram, which is the most my MacBook will support.

     

    - Jake

  • by WZZZ,

    WZZZ WZZZ Feb 24, 2015 5:03 AM in response to macintoshJake
    Level 6 (13,112 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2015 5:03 AM in response to macintoshJake

    You definitely should not be using Safari. All that's needed is to hit one bad website and you're done.

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 24, 2015 8:58 AM in response to WZZZ
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 24, 2015 8:58 AM in response to WZZZ

    WZZZ,

     

    I assume you mean that in the context of using Safari...?

     

    - Jake

  • by WZZZ,

    WZZZ WZZZ Feb 24, 2015 9:24 AM in response to macintoshJake
    Level 6 (13,112 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2015 9:24 AM in response to macintoshJake

    >>I assume you mean that in the context of using Safari...?

     

    What don't you understand about "You definitely should not be using Safari." Does saying it again make it any clearer? OK, don't use Safari.

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 24, 2015 9:46 AM in response to WZZZ
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 24, 2015 9:46 AM in response to WZZZ

    WZZZ,

     

    There is no reason for you to be rude. I must have looked over the first sentence of your post. But even so, that is no reason for you to be rude about it.

     

    - Jake

  • by WZZZ,

    WZZZ WZZZ Feb 24, 2015 10:12 AM in response to macintoshJake
    Level 6 (13,112 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2015 10:12 AM in response to macintoshJake

    Sorry about that, but I just found the question unbelievable: I had already said, early on, that Safari wasn't being updated, and to use Firefox instead. And then, when you said you still preferred to use it, it seemed you didn't realize the seriousness of this. So I said it again, but this time so it would get through more strongly, "just hit one bad site and game over." When you asked the question about context, I was thinking that you really didn't want to accept the bad news about Safari.

     

    Here's an older sample of vulnerabilities patched by a Safari update.

     

    "Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution," Apple noted in its advisory.

    "Arbitrary code execution" means that some bad guy can run whatever they want through your browser and on into your user and system.

     

    Just over a month after it released Safari 7.0.4 and Safari 6.1.4, Apple made available on Monday Safari 7.0.5 and Safari 6.1.5. A total of 12 security flaws affecting WebKit have been addressed with the latest releases. The vulnerabilities could lead to unexpected application termination, arbitrary code execution, disclosure of local file content, and domain name spoofing.

    http://www.securityweek.com/apple-patches-multiple-vulnerabilities-safari-web-br owser

     

    And

     

    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203007

     

    And a more recent one.

     

    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204243

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 24, 2015 10:50 AM in response to WZZZ
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 24, 2015 10:50 AM in response to WZZZ

    WZZZ,

     

    I actually quit using Safari as soon as I read on the forum that it was a bad idea. I meant that I preferred Safari but I will use Firefox (which I also like)  if I have to.

     

    - Jake

  • by WZZZ,

    WZZZ WZZZ Feb 24, 2015 1:18 PM in response to macintoshJake
    Level 6 (13,112 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2015 1:18 PM in response to macintoshJake

    You may eventually come to prefer Firefox. It is far more customizable than Safari and most other browsers, and there are add-ons/extensions for just about anything. Besides its customizability, one of the main reasons I use it is because of NoScript, for its heightened security, which you may want to look into.

     

    https://noscript.net/features

     

    https://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=268

     

    Another one I wouldn't want to be without is Adblock Plus, with filter subscriptions EasyList and EasyPrivacy. When you set it up, "Allow some non-intrusive advertising," in Filter Preferences, is checked by default. You may want to uncheck that.

     

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

  • by WZZZ,

    WZZZ WZZZ Feb 24, 2015 3:10 PM in response to WZZZ
    Level 6 (13,112 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2015 3:10 PM in response to WZZZ

    Just updated to Firefox 36. What's been fixed:

     

    Screen Shot 2015-02-24 at 6.08.24 PM.png

     

    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox/

  • by macintoshJake,

    macintoshJake macintoshJake Feb 24, 2015 3:23 PM in response to WZZZ
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 24, 2015 3:23 PM in response to WZZZ

    I actually used Firefox for a long time before I started using Safari. What I liked about Safari was that it was streamlined with my other Apple devices. I also liked that it worked with Keychain. But Firefox has something sort of similar to that, in terms of passwords.

     

    I have used AdBlock Plus for a while now, but I will check out NoScript.

     

    - Jake

  • by Chris Ibsen,

    Chris Ibsen Chris Ibsen Jun 23, 2015 8:27 AM in response to macintoshJake
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jun 23, 2015 8:27 AM in response to macintoshJake

    Don't listen to all these people telling you NOT to use Safari. I have a iMac from 2010 and have not liked any OS X since Snow Leopard. All bells and whistles and loss of functionality (not to mention commandeering much of your RAM). I have 8GB of RAM and could easily upgrade to Yosemite but won't. Yeah it's annoying when you visit certain sites and they use user agent detection and try and force you to upgrade but I won't. All these people love to try an scare you into converting by saying OMG your computer will be toast if you hit one bad site. It could happen to any computer on any OS X. Just be smart and never download weird things. I always go to my library in finder and clear out caches, cookies, metadata, clear all local storage etc. I don't use extensions and deny all third party cookies. I clean daily. You can use older OS X/ Safari just use common sense on the internet. Don't listen to scare tactics. My g/f has yosemite and hates it. I've messed with it and it's really annoying. Not everyone wants mobile everything. I like desktop everything. Snow Leopard is very fast for me as like I said before I clear anything that could slow it down constantly.

  • by thomas_r.,

    thomas_r. thomas_r. Jun 23, 2015 8:50 AM in response to Chris Ibsen
    Level 7 (30,924 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 23, 2015 8:50 AM in response to Chris Ibsen

    Chris Ibsen wrote:

     

    All these people love to try an scare you into converting by saying OMG your computer will be toast if you hit one bad site. It could happen to any computer on any OS X.

     

    That is not at all true. Currently, there is no known way to install something via drive-by download on up-to-date versions of Safari. Your computer absolutely will NOT be toast just from visiting a bad site in Safari at this time, based on any currently available information.

     

    Safari in Snow Leopard, however, hasn't been updated since 2013. I haven't kept myself updated on possible security issues with Safari in Snow Leopard, because I haven't used Snow Leopard in many years, and don't even own any machines that can run it anymore. However, there is a distinct possibility that some of the vulnerabilities that have been fixed for newer versions of Safari in the last two years could also be a problem for Safari 5.1.10 in Snow Leopard, but were not fixed.

     

    Thus, it is possible that drive-by vulnerabilities exist in Safari on Snow Leopard. The only thing keeping you somewhat safe from such things is the fact that Snow Leopard is a shrinking target, probably not worth attacking by most hackers.

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