How can I turn 'gamed' off on OS X Sierra?
I don't use 'gamed' and want to turn it off on OS X Sierra. Is this possible?
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016), iOS 10.2
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My reason for disabling this feature is security. I do not use Game Center on my laptop; therefore, I do not want the gamed process perpetually blasting requests out to the Internet every time I login to my laptop and/or connect to WiFi. Because when it does, anyone within WiFi range will know an OS X machine just got online.
After researching the issue online, I found three possible solutions for preventing this feature from reaching the Internet. Try these as your own risk.
1. Little Snitch - This will only block the gamed requests from getting to the Internet but not disable it. And the requests appear to increase exponentially - like thousands of requests in a daily session.
2. GitHub - There are two resources that I found on GitHub that would be worth researching - OS X Security Guide by DrDuh and Santa (binary whitelisting/blacklisting system for macOS).
3. Use Automator in OS X to create a bash script that stops the GameD process after it starts. I have mine setup to launch on login with a prompt to execute. This has not been perfected and you may encounter issues if you run it immediately after you login to OS X. Normally I wait until I see an alert from Little Snitch that gamed is phoning home the I click 'Continue' to run the script. You can also try stack exchange, to see if anyone there has something useful to stop the process after login. I prefer to stay away from the solutions that disable the service as those require disabling/overriding SIP which I advise against.
Here is the bash script I use. Any suggestions on improving it are welcome.
#!/bin/bash
chkService=gamed
chkCount=10
chkStatus=$(ps ax | grep "$chkService" | grep -v grep | grep " T " | wc -l)
while [ $chkStatus -ne 1 ]; do
chkProcess=$(ps ax | grep -v grep | grep "$chkService" | wc -l)
if [ $chkProcess -ne 0 ];
then
KILLALL -STOP "$chkService"
chkCount=0
chkStatus=$(ps ax | grep gamed | grep -v grep | grep " T " | wc -l)
else
SLEEP=1
chkCount=$((chkCount-1))
fi
done
On a Windows machine (up to Windows 7), one can fully control what processes send requests to the Internet. With Windows 10 , this has become more of a challenge but still may be possible - I haven't fully researched it.
This obviously isn't the case with Apple in OS X. As a professional using OS X, I reserve the right to disable resources that are extraneous especially if they expose my online presence unnecessarily.
Letting everyone in an Internet Cafe know that someone nearby just connected with a potential $2,000 laptop isn't desirable.
Good luck!
