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Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
![[avcomlab]](/webx/?31@@305446f9@2)
avcomlab (apparently)
- 06:31am Aug 31, 2008 PSTvia emailI have been inscribed from Tidbits talk for a while due to time
constraints however, I experienced a very worrying event in the early
hours of this morning that has prompted me to ask for assistance here.
I have an iMac 24 inch wirelessly connected to an Airport Extreme
802.11n which has an ethernet connection to a cable modem. I am
running the latest OS X fully updated and have XP operating for the
kids gaming via Boot Camp.
Early this morning, must have bee 0200 or so but too tired to check, I
was woken by the mac start-up bong. When I checked to see if my son
was unusually sneaking a game of WOW, I found the unattended computer
running and the login dialogue box open per the normal startup
sequence, with no typing in the password field. No one with physical
access had started the iMac.
We are using WPA/WPA2 Personal and a reasonable strong login pasword
and have the wireless Admin set the same as my computer login. The
computer has auto login disabled in preferences. I do have remote
login and back to my mac checked on.
I would welcome ideas from anyone about what might have caused this
and would like to know if I should be worried or need to change the
configuration.
Regards
Neil
Kirk McElhearn (apparently)
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Aug 31, 2008 11:49 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
On Aug 31, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Neil Bartlett wrote:
>
> I would welcome ideas from anyone about what might have caused this
> and would like to know if I should be worried or need to change the
> configuration.
Check the Energy Saver preferences - they can set a startup time (and
shutdown time). Someone must have done this; I doubt any software you
would have installed could do it...
Kirk
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R.A. Hettinga (apparently)
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Aug 31, 2008 11:49 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
On Aug 31, 2008, at 9:31 AM, Neil Bartlett wrote:
> woken by the mac start-up bong
Hmmm. Reminds me of one of college roomates and his distaste for
caffeine...
But seriously, you can set a Mac to restart when it crashes, or when
it hangs for some period of time, which is what this sounds like.
Cheers,
RAH
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Lewis Butler (apparently)
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Aug 31, 2008 11:49 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
On 31-Aug-2008, at 07:31, Neil Bartlett wrote:
> I would welcome ideas from anyone about what might have caused this
> and would like to know if I should be worried or need to change the
> configuration.
Put your machine on a UPS. Probably what happened, and has happened
to me on occasions. is there was a powerspike that was just exactly
what was needed to shut off the mac, but not enough to shut it down
completely, so it restarted. Or you have "restart automatically after
a power failure."
And yes, I've had powerspikes that rebooted the machine and did not
reset the clocks.
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kevinv (apparently)
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Aug 31, 2008 11:49 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
--On August 31, 2008 6:31:35 AM -0700 Neil Bartlett
<avcomlab  paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> I would welcome ideas from anyone about what might have caused this
> and would like to know if I should be worried or need to change the
> configuration.
Open System Prefs, Energy Saver
Check the Options tab
Make sure Wake for Ethernet network administrator and Restart automatically
after a power failure are off (it's possible a electrical surge made the
make power on.)
Do you have a mac with the power button easily accessible? I've had cats
turn on macs by brushing against some of the touch sensitive buttons. And
cats that turn on macs by walking on the power button on the keyboard. And
cats that have tried logging in by walking across the keyboard. You
probably see a pattern forming here.
Check for an app that autostarts the mac. I got this from Twitter so don't
credit me, but from the Terminal do:
pmset -g sched
That should show any app that is scheduled to auto-start the Mac. I use
Faronics Power Save and it's scheduled to turn my mac on every day at
9:55am (and back off at 10:30am) for backups so the results for me show:
Scheduled power events:
[0] wakeorpoweron at 09/01/08 09:55:00 by com.faronics.PowerSave
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avcomlab (apparently)
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Sep 1, 2008 6:26 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
Thanks Kevin,
the terminal command did the trick and revealed the problem App and a
google search conformed it is a bug in EyeTV that causes an un-
commanded start-up after you schedule a recording the day before.
Thanks for the tip
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mjones1954
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Sep 2, 2008 2:25 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
As a public school technology director, I discovered this problem with the 10.5 machines.
I used to set a shutdown time on every machine to insure that the teachers were shutting down the machines, and this created the problem.
To solve the problem, go to energy saver and insure that you DO NOT have a shutdown time set. If you have a shutdown time in a 10.5 but no startup time the machine will turn itself on at 0 hour zulu.
The best way so to go to computer--> library--> preferences--> SystemConfiguration and dump the com.apple.AutoWake.plist Then DO NOT set in a shutdown time, just leave it blank.
Mike
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D.E.Cohen
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Sep 2, 2008 2:25 am
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Re: Security Concern of an un-commanded start-up
There is a known bug in Leopard that under some circumstances causes a Mac to wake up at midnight GMT. So if your time zone is two hours different, your machine may wake at 02.00.
I ran into this issue a while ago, and it was discussed in the newsgroup comp.sys.mac.system
The reply I got that answered my concerns was
There is a bug in Leopard that can cause it to turn on power at 00:00
UTC (GMT). If can interpret "No power on event" to mean "Power on at
00:00". Your schedule shows Audio Hijack Pro scheduling a Wake, but no
Power-on. This can cause the problem
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