Little Snitch intercepted "Noticeboard wants to connect to swscan.apple.com" Legit?

WZZZ wrote:

With the Snow user base still hovering around 20%, my guess is they want to move everyone off Snow. Hence the annoying reminders.

Exactly my thoughts, as well.

Two ways to look at this, if what I say is true: another Snow security update might still be forthcoming until they get that user base down to what they consider to be an acceptable minimum. Or it means, "you've had your chance."

I'd be surprised to see another security update, but then I was surprised by the last one. XProtect is still receiving updates when appropriate (there have been a couple that don't run on SL) but they had a chance to update Java SE 6 one more time and did not.

BTW: I didn't notice any noticeboards alerts for the last 3 days. It seems to have stopped.

Am I wrong in thinking that one only gets the popup if one has Little Snitch? That, otherwise, "Noticeboard" connects to "swscan.apple.com" anyway; on its own; in the background?

Depends what you mean by pop-up. Whether you meant the Little Snitch pop-up asking to deny or allow, or the Noticeboard pop-up.

Yes, that's wrong. What Little Snitch does is prevent the outgoing connection that Noticeboard wants to make to Apple. So, it's just the opposite: if you have LS set to deny that connection, you won't get the pop-up.

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

professortiki wrote:

BTW: I didn't notice any noticeboards alerts for the last 3 days. It seems to have stopped.

You won't necessarily get an alert every time it checks for new ones. Messages may be one-time or there may be an specific interval for repeat messages.

Am I wrong in thinking that one only gets the popup if one has Little Snitch? That, otherwise, "Noticeboard" connects to "swscan.apple.com" anyway; on its own; in the background?

You are exactly not wrong!

MadMacs0 wrote:

You won't necessarily get an alert every time it checks for new ones. Messages may be one-time or there may be an specific interval for repeat messages.

It used to be a six hours interval in the first few weeks. Now this stopped completely.

<deleted>

but would they gain anything from knowing who runs Little Snitch? It doesn't interfere with their business/products afaik, at least none of the Apple apps i use, and it's legal software.

professortiki wrote:

It used to be a six hours interval in the first few weeks. Now this stopped completely.

I must have missed how long this has been going on for you and if you have done anything overtly to stop them. I know you attempted to throw the Framework overboard which was a mistake and you seem to be familiar with Little Snitch.

I was under the impression that this just started a couple of weeks ago, around 3/13, but now I see there was an earlier update for the App Store that I haven't examined back on 2/19.

Are you using LS to block contacts with swscan.apple.com? If so, you need to be careful with that as it's the same server that provides information on all your OS X Software Updates.

Just to follow up on the Mac App Store Update provided on 2/19. It did not contain the noticeboard.app and appears to have been for Mountain Lion only. It does, however, contain a unix executable process called maspushagent that could possibly have a similar capability. I see that Mavericks has this same process, but Snow Leopard does not.

I got it also on Lion and, yes, it was for Mavericks.

MadMacs0 wrote:

I would encourage everybody that thinks helping you to upgrade to Mavericks is the wrong approach to let Apple know directly since they are unlikely to read this. Give them you feedback here.

What category (or categories) would you recommend filing it under?

eric97 wrote:

What category (or categories) would you recommend filing it under?

Technically it's part of the Mac App Store, so that would put it under "Software/Firmware Update".