My firewall keeps alerting me to an application trying to communicate with the network on port 80. The application is named com.apple with no other extension. Is this a normal part of the OS? What is it doing and what is it for?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
Thanks Brendan,
But I know what the port does. And I know that since it's the most common port of all, every app in the world tries to use it.
My question fundamentally is:
What is the application com.apple? And why does it need network access?
This seems like the kind of thing that could be malware mascarading as something from Apple, because I can find no references to it on the net. Now, maybe that's just because the search engines see com.apple, and give you com.apple.blah, but until I actually understand what it is, and where it came from, I'm not enabling it.
Hi mreeves68,
If you are interested in what ports are commonly used by the system software, you may find the following article helpful:
Apple Support: Well known TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1629
Regards,
- Brenden
com.apple is a preference file, as are all com files.
My best guess is it's a root OS file, probably related to an Apple software update, or maybe to location settings.
Disallowing it will probably cause you problems.
Yeah, but that is my problem with it. It looks like it should be a preference file, but it's acting like an application. Preference files shouldn't need to access the network.
Mavericks changed a lot of the applications accessing the internet, now there is a com.apple.WebKit.Networking thing that is accessing the network, as well as several others that are of a similar format.
But I would like someone from Apple to tell me what this thing is, because the icon in my firewall is different than the others, and I didn't start getting this warning until over a month after I loaded Mavericks. If I need it I need it, but I want to know what it's doing before enabling it.
mreeves68 wrote:
Never mind. I think I traced it down. This appears to be part of the lookup daemon. Buried way down in the resources and is part of the lookup.framework
Maybe I am just too paranoid. 🙂
That's what I figured. "Find my Mac" seems to always be trying to update the location. Even on my Mac Mini which has moved all of six feet since I got it. (Yes, I rearranged the room and moved the desk. Fortunately, I can still find it though.) 😝
I guess I'm not the only one. Found a similar discussion about this sucker on the MacRumors forum
Never mind. I think I traced it down. This appears to be part of the lookup daemon. Buried way down in the resources and is part of the lookup.framework
Maybe I am just too paranoid. 🙂
What is com.apple, and why is it trying to communicate with port 80?
