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hello.connectivity.me.com HUH?!? WTF?

Hi Kids -

I'm a tad miffed: I just updated OS to 10.6.5 and now when I boot I'm asked if I want to allow hello.connectivity.me.com to connect. Booting seems to stall until I say "yes/once". Then another requester pops up asking for permission only this time hello.connectivity.me.com is appended .akadns.net. This seems to be related to akamai.

Does anybody have any idea what this is??? I also ran a delocalizer after OS update (which might be interfering with the firewall?). Worrisome.......

27" iMac i7 QuadCore, Mac OS X (10.6.3), 20" iMac G5, iMac G3, (2) Amigas, Video Toaster and an old yoyo.

Posted on Nov 10, 2010 8:45 PM

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20 replies

Nov 10, 2010 9:24 PM in response to jimbo60640

Sorry, the post should have read:

Hi Kids -

I'm a tad miffed: I just updated OS to 10.6.5 and now when I boot I get "awacsd" wants to connect to hello.connectivity.me.com to connect. I say "yes/once". Then another requester pops up asking for the same permission only this time hello.connectivity.me.com is appended .akadns.net. This seems to be related to akamai.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1923545/Screenshots/Screen%20shot%202010-11-10%20at%2011 .02.26%20PM.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1923545/Screenshots/Screen%20shot%202010-11-10%20at%2011 .04.19%20PM.pdf

Does anybody have any idea what this is??? What is "awacsd"? I also ran a delocalizer after OS update (which might be interfering with the firewall?). Worrisome.......

Message was edited by: jimbo60640

Nov 10, 2010 11:21 PM in response to jimbo60640

what's so worrisome? as you say, akadns.net is one of Akamai's domains, so that can be ignored.
me.com belongs to Apple and because we've all now suddenly seen this and the only common denominator amongst is the 10.6.5 upgrade, it has to have come from Apple. It's incredibly unlikely that they've packaged a trojan in their upgrade (and if they had, I'd expect Sophos AV to have picked it up at the same time that LittleSnitch did)
So it's probably just preparation for some MobileMe functionality, or for when the Mac App Store arrives, this way the OS will check for updates as it boots.

LittleSnitch reports everything to you, it's not able to tell the difference between good connections and bad ones.

Nov 13, 2010 1:36 AM in response to jimbo60640

yeah me too.
I also have Little Snitch running and get the same warning
I like to know what is happening on my Mac and which application is 'phoning' home for example.

With LS running you are amazed how many apps are doing this, mostly checking for updates, which behaviour you can control in most of the times by setting a parameter.

It's true, when you have MobileMe running there is some traffic, also in case of syncing

Nov 13, 2010 12:39 PM in response to jimbo60640

I seemed to be having a serious problem with my MacBook Air (a couple of years old). It was not responsive and had trouble connecting to the internet wirelessly. I found that the awacsd process was consuming 100% of CPU time. I realized that I am behind a strict firewall. After reading several posts in this thread (using my iPad), I also realized that Back to My Mac was turned on. So it seems that BTMM was banging against the firewall unsuccessfully and continuously. I was not able to get the System Preferences to run. I finally was able to turn off Airport, and my MacBook Air recovered. I turned off Back to My Mac, turned Airport back on, and all was well. So I guess the moral is, "Beware" of BTMM behind a firewall. Thanks to everyone in this thread for your insight.

Nov 18, 2010 11:19 AM in response to Don MacQueen1

Well, output from Terminal to man awacsd:
"awacsd(8) BSD System Manager's Manual awacsd(8)
NAME
awacsd -- Apple Wide Area Connectivity Service daemon
SYNOPSIS
awacsd [-uh] [-d logfile]
DESCRIPTION
awacsd is an executable invoked by launchd to facilitate connections
between devices using Back to My Mac. Users cannot invoke awacsd from the
command line.
The options are as follows:
-u Do not attempt UDP hole punching
-h Do not attempt TLS hostname verification
-d logfile
Log verbose debugging messages to the specified file."
Looks like it is harmless, part of the system, so I fully authorized it in LittleSnitch, no more messages.

hello.connectivity.me.com HUH?!? WTF?

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