Are you relatively new to the Mac platform and wondering what kind of tools are available for security research, malware analysis, reverse engineering and Mac infosec in general? While Macs share a heritage with Linux and thus have many common tools (although often with different implementations), there is also a whole bunch of macOS specific tools that you might not be aware of yet. In this post, I cover some of the essential tools that will help you with security-related work on macOS, from text editors and process monitors to disassemblers and networking tools. Most are free or inexpensive, and all are tools that I use on a regular basis.

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Running macOS on a Virtual Machine

If you’re planning on doing any kind of investigation into Mac malware, want to set up a lab for attacking Mac clients or simply want to investigate macOS internals with System Integrity Protection turned off, then you’re going to need to set up some VMs (Virtual Machines), and for that you need some good virtualization software.

VMWare is probably the most well-known commercial virtualization product out there, and of course it has a Mac version, called Fusion. Oracle’s VirtualBox is a capable alternative if you’re looking for free, but has some serious limitations, such as no snapshot feature. If you’re primarily interested in running Mac VMs on a Mac host, my personal recommendation is Parallels. Although VMWare Fusion runs macOS guests perfectly well, I find Parallels has somewhat smoother graphics performance. It’ll also run Windows and Linux guests just as well as VMWare. The price and feature set are otherwise comparable.

To use this Mac software all you have to do is download it Add files or folders containing duplicates click the Scan button to begin sorting Remove to clean all the duplicate files at once! Enjoy deduplicate library in three-clicks. Duplicate Files Fixer is a must have mac application to fill your bucket of Best Mac.

General Purpose Text Editors for Mac

1. Bring your Mac back to Life. Users can even ask the developers to make custom built builds of their software. New Discord Our new Vibrant Community Chat. We have started a Discord Server for the Unsupported Mac community. Whether you need some Support or Fun, you’re guaranteed someone is online. OS X Hackers are is not affiliated with.
2. A MAC spoofing attack is where the intruder sniffs the network for valid MAC addresses and attempts to act together of the valid MAC addresses. The intruder then presents itself because the default gateway and copies all of the info forwarded to the default gateway without being detected. This provides the intruder valuable details about applications in use and destination host IP addresses.

Nothing causes more controversy than a debate on “which is the best text editor”, so let’s get this one out of the way early! If you already have a favorite text editor you’ll hopefully find it’s already available on macOS. Atom, Brackets, and Sublime are all available on Apple’s desktop platform, but if you haven’t picked a favorite yet, then I’d recommend BBEdit from Bare Bones software. This Mac-specific text editor comes in a free version with no time restrictions, and offers a polite upsell for the extra features if you want them. I say ‘polite’ because there are no nags or reminders once you’ve passed the initial “trial” stage during which time all the extra features are enabled. You’ll only want to pay for it if you find the extra features are things you need (or you want to support the developer’s good work!).

BBEdit has lots of useful features, like easy diffing, multi-file search, line processing, grep and project workspaces, to name a few. Of course, it has all the usual things you’d expect in a good text editor from column selection and multiple cursors to syntax highlighting, cold folding and snippet management. It also has great automation features with Python-based text filters and the ability to run user-defined scripts on selected text or the entire document. Conveniently, you can also run scripts that you’re editing within BBEdit itself. This editor has pretty much every feature I can imagine. A true workhorse.

It’s also worth-mentioning for those that are not familiar with the Mac that you also have the powerful Vi text editor built-in for free on the command line. Vi is a multi-purpose tool that’s great for coding and reverse engineering. Because it includes a command line interface, you can call shell commands within (and on) your current editing session, which is extremely useful. For example, if you open a binary file in Vi, you can dump it to hex without leaving the editor by issuing the command

:%!xdd

After making your edits, revert back to binary before saving:

:%!xxd -r

The % character ensures that the command is applied to the contents of the file, while the ! is used to call the external command line utility xxd. We use xxd‘s -r switch to revert the hex dump back to binary format. Vi can have a steep learning curve, but it will pay you back in spades. Start here for a quick intro.

For Hex editing specifically, I find the native hexdump and xxd utilities sufficient for my needs, but Hex Fiend is a useful GUI alternative.

IDEs and Code Editors on the Mac

All of the above text editors can be used for coding, but if you’re looking for a rich-featured development environment there are other options. The default on the Mac is of course Xcode, which is free and available for download from the Apple Mac App Store. As I’ll say more about later, you will want to install Xcode’s command line tools regardless of whether you have a need for the IDE or not.

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Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is also available on the Mac (and is also free) and provides a very nice, slick and powerful editor with tonnes of plug-ins. If you’re coming to macOS from the Linux world, you’ll be pleased to know that Geany is also available on the Mac.

I don’t really have a favorite among these. I use all three of them from time to time depending on what language I’m working with: typically, Xcode for Objective C and Swift; Geany for pure C and Go; Visual Studio for Python, PowerShell (yes, PowerShell is available on the Mac, too!), JavaScript and everything else.

Finally, if you plan on working with AppleScript in any shape or form, and there’s a few good reasons for doing that from a security perspective, ignore the built-in Script Editor (located at /Applications/Utilities/Script Editor if you can’t!) and grab a copy of Script Debugger, which will save you endless hours of headaches. Like BBEdit, this software has an open-ended free version and non-aggressive upsell for the extra features.

How to Install Xcode Command Line Tools

The Xcode Command Line Tools are an absolute must-have and one of the first things I always load up on any macOS install, virtual or bare metal. Installing the command line tools is simple. Just open a Terminal window and type:

$ xcode-select --install

Click “Install” to download and install Xcode Command Line Tools. You can choose to include or ignore downloading the Xcode IDE at the same time.

There’s over a hundred tools packaged here, including such essentials as strings, nm, python3, otool and lldb.

Package, Archive and Disk Image Inspectors

If you were wondering what tool I used in the previous screenshot to inspect the Command Line Tools package, let me introduce you to Pacifist, one of two essential tools for inspecting packages, archives and disk images. Pacifist is shareware and free to use with a time delay on launch, but only costs $20 to support.

Another useful tool you should have in your armoury for inspecting .pkg files is the free SuspiciousPackage tool from developers Mothers Ruin software. What I particularly love about this application is the robust AppleScript support, which makes it possible to automate searching packages for specific capabilities, items and strings.

Disassemblers and Debuggers for macOS

All the major reversing tools from other platforms are available on macOS. These include Ida Pro, radare2, Binary Ninja and Ghidra. There’s also the built-for-Mac Hopper disassembler.

There’s also the GUI version of radare2, Cutter, as yet another alternative.

If you download the free Xcode Command Line tools as suggested above, you’ll gain access to otool and lldb, which along with Hopper and radare2, are my personal favorites for macOS static and dynamic reversing work.

Mac Tools for Process and File Monitoring

Process and File monitoring are basic functions you need for any kind of malware dynamic analysis, bug hunting or software reverse engineering. If you execute

$ apropos snoop

on the command line, you’ll see there’s a few built-in utilities based on DTrace for file and process monitoring.

Unfortunately, these have been somewhat castrated by System Integrity Protection, so you really have to run them on a SIP-less VM client to get much value out of them on recent versions of macOS.

The native command line fs_usage utility is still useful for displaying system calls relating to the filesystem, and to that end FSMonitor provides a convenient graphical interface. Once free, the tool is now proprietary, but it’s very reasonably priced (~$19 at the time of writing).

FSEvents are written to disk by the OS and can be found in the root of each volume in a hidden directory called /.fseventsd. In order to access them, you’ll have to drop down to root and CD in to the dir, but inside you’ll be met by some very unfriendly gzip compressed data. Fortunately, FSEventsParser comes to the rescue here. This free tool allows you to parse and extract data relevant to specific enquiries. You can define your own but lots of pre-made queries are available that will help you to report on most aspects of file activity.

Process monitoring on the Mac can of course be achieved through Activity Monitor.app and the command line tools ps and top. Jaron Bradley’s TrueTree repo offers a more nuanced look at process hierarchies while Patrick Wardle’s TaskExplorer offers a convenient way to explore processes and see the signature status, loaded dylibs, open files, network connections and even VirusTotal status for each file backing a running process.

For a far more informative utility than the native top, try Jonathan Levin’s Process Explorer, which has a more useful interactive mode than the native tool. For example, pressing the Enter key on a process line will reveal more details about it, and processes can be filtered by name using the “/” key and specifying the process name.

Networking Tools For macOS

Being Unix based, you’ll find most of the standard network tools already present in macOS, including nc (aka netcat), ping, trace, ipconfig and so on. Note that both ftp and telnet are not available by default on the Mac since 10.13, High Sierra.

There is a useful built-in utility Network Utility.app (located at /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Network Utility.app) that combines a number of useful functions like Netstat, Whois and Port Scanning.

A version of the packet analyzer Wireshark is available for the Mac, and there is also the free, Mac-specific CocoaPacketAnalyzer tool as an alternative.

The venerable Little Snitch undoubtedly remains the de facto standard firewall / network monitoring tool on the platform. Although it isn’t free, it’s not expensive either (less than $50 at the time of writing), and even if you never use its many excellent features, just having it running on your system is a good deterrent for a number of macOS malware strains that exit when they detect that Little Snitch is present.

SQL Database Viewers

If you’re doing any kind of investigation into macOS itself or Incident Response, you’re going to need to be comfortable with SQLite. The Mac comes with a sqlite3 command line utility built-in, a front-end to the SQLite library that can evaluate queries interactively and display the results in multiple formats.

For GUI interfaces, the commercial TablePlus offers a modern, slick interface and can be used for free, but the free version limits you to no more than three open databases at a time. Personally, I prefer the open source DB Browser for SQLite. Though not particularly pretty, it is robust, feature-rich and well-maintained.

Miscellaneous Tools

In this section I list a few other utilities that I find very useful but which don’t fall into an easy category.

The first is a free little application called RBAppChecker Lite. This provides a GUI front end to system codesign and spctl utilities, and provides a very quick, nice and informative overview of the validity of an application bundle’s codesigning status. Unfortunately, the app appears to be in legacy status, but it still works well enough on the current version of macOS Catalina.

The Mach-O Explorer is a graphical Mach-O viewer for macOS that aims to provide a feature set similar to the venerable MachOView application.

In similar vein, dsdump is a modern replacement for the older class-dump utility for displaying the compiled Swift types and Objective-C classes in a Mach-O binary.

Finally, one of every reverse engineer’s basic tools is the strings utility. It’s worth noting that the macOS version of this tool is a little different from its Linux cousin, and in particular does not handle the same range of encodings. Fortunately, there is a great, free alternative called Floss that will serve you much better.

Conclusion

In this guide, I’ve tried to focus on tools that are particularly useful for those engaged in security research and infosec on the Mac platform. I’ve covered some tools that may be familiar from other platforms, but tried primarily to highlight macOS-specific tools that newcomers to the platform might not be familiar with yet or might not easily discover on their own. There should be enough here to get you set up with most of what you need for any macOS security research task, but of course, there’s plenty more to be discovered. Undoubtedly, as with any guide of this nature, I’ll have overlooked someone’s favorite essential tool (sorry!). If so, by all means hit me up on Twitter and let me know, and perhaps we can include it in an update to this guide.

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Purchasing a new MacBook is much similar to buying a ticket to a land of fabulous software & apps. In addition to all the free programs offered by Apple to all the fresh Mac owners, there are some extras essential Mac apps too that help to make the most out of your Machine.

We’ve organized a list of the most useful Mac software and programs that are categorized into ten major categories, ranging from Best Mac Cleaning utility to Best Media Player & so on. Take a look at our best of bunch & let us know which of these suits the most for your needs!

Top 10 Best Mac Apps & Utilities for 2020

We’ve trawled the software market to find the most ideal Mac utilities & apps in every major category for better productivity and efficiency. Try them now!

1. Disk Clean Pro (Best Mac Cleaner & Optimizer)

An all-in-one solution to keep your Mac machine clean & optimized for smooth performance.

Disk Clean Pro is an affordable tune-up utility to help users maintain their system for a longer time. It features dedicated modules to remove junk files along with hidden redundant files to improve response time & speed up Mac. It’s ‘One-Click Care’ works like magic to keep your machine run clutter-free.

Disk Clean Pro is an excellent Mac optimizer, packed with all the advanced features that several Mac Cleaning utilities miss. Packed with various tools like Junk Cleaner, Logs Cleaner, Crash Reports, Partial Downloads remover, Duplicate Finder, Large & Old Files Cleaner & more. Moreover, it offers a module, Internet Privacy Protector, that works efficiently to remove traces of your browsing history for best-in-class Mac security.

The best part? Disk Clean Pro is available at just $0.99, & it’s a limited time offer, so what are you waiting for? Optimize the storage space in a single scan & make the most of Mac’s disk space.

Several websites have reported Disk Clean Pro, as the #1 Mac Cleaning & Optimization Utility!

2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard (Best Data Recovery Tool for Mac)

An advanced data recovery tool to retrieve accidentally deleted files, documents, music, videos and much more.

Losing data & important files is the kind of nightmare no one would ever want to experience. But unfortunately, it has been known to happen for a variety of reasons such as, drive failure, human error & viruses. However, the “good thing” is the availability of a Data Recovery Software that makes restoring lost files effortless.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is one such data recovery service that lives up to its name, by offering easy yet effective recovery solutions that makes users task super simple. The tool not only helps in locating recently deleted files from corrupted & critical file systems, but also helps in restoring data from external storage devices such as memory sticks, USB drives etc.

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There are three different versions available with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard: Free, Pro & Unlimited. Free edition allows you to recover data up to 200 MB. Get this Best Mac App for your system now!

3. Systweak Anti-Malware (Best Anti-Malware for Mac)

The 24/7 malware protection against your Mac.

Systweak Anti-Malware is a robust Mac security software that does a fantastic job of detecting any type of malicious content hiding in your system. Its smart algorithms understand which types of threats can put your Mac Machine at risk, and hence keep a close check that no suspicious program, malware, adware or spyware could bypass Mac’s defenses.

The antivirus software claims to have a 100% success rate for detecting dangerous malware and viruses. The lightweight application offers multiple scanning methods to make sure you have an ultimate protection against malware and other infections.

To keep your Mac safe, the antivirus software regularly updates its malware database, so that no latest suspicious threat can bypass you Mac’s security. It not only shields your Machine from online threats but also optimizes it for smooth-functioning, which probably makes it one of the best anti-virus programs in the market.

4. CyberGhost VPN Mac (Best VPN App for Mac)

A feature-rich, powerful VPN for PC with an easy-to-use interface, suitable for both novices & professionals.

CyberGhost is one of the most reliable VPN services for Mac. It boasts a really easy set-up process. In fact, all you have to do is download the VPN for your OS from the below button and launch it with one-click on your system. The VPN software boasts more than 3,700 servers across 60+ countries, including optimized servers for torrenting & other streaming services.

The VPN solution comes with a bundle of extra tools to block unnecessary ads, track malicious websites that attempts to make unauthorized access on your system and an automated HTTPS redirection that ensure most secure connection.

It’s one-month plan costs $12.99 which is a bit higher than other standard VPN services in the market. But that’s totally worthy as it supports connecting up to seven devices simultaneously.

5. Duplicate Files Fixer (Best Duplicate Files Cleaner for Mac)

An efficient, fast and easy-to-use duplicate file cleaner to get rid of identical documents, photos, videos, music and other digital media files.

Duplicate Files Fixer by Systweak Software is an awesome duplicate cleaner that helps you reclaim chunks of occupied hard drive space, clogged with unnecessary duplicates such as Documents, Videos, Music, Photos and other files. It’s one of the Best Mac Software for both professional and novice users for finding exact and similar-looking files.

This duplicate file finder comes with a robust set of functionalities for scanning different file types in just a few moments. The Mac utility has a sleek & intuitive interface for great navigation experience. It lets you create a backup of all your duplicate files before you delete them. The application is capable of scanning external devices as well for finding duplicates.

To use this Mac software all you have to do is download it > Add files or folders containing duplicates > click the Scan button to begin sorting > Remove to clean all the duplicate files at once! Enjoy deduplicate library in three-clicks. Duplicate Files Fixer is a must have mac application to fill your bucket of Best Mac Utilities 2020.

6. Stellar Drive Clone (Best Disk Cloning App for Mac)

A robust Mac utility to help you clone & restore all the files on your hard drive, so you can always have your peace of mind.

Stellar Drive Clone is a complete suite to create a Clone or Image of your Mac hard drive. The Cloned copy can be used as a ‘read-to-use’ copy of the original hard drive. And, the Image file can be used for ‘restoring purpose’ in case any data mishap happens.

The advanced Mac cloning tool supports various types of cloning including, HFS-to-HFS, FAT-to-FAT & NTFS-to-EXFAT. Stellar Drive Clone is a must-have Mac app if you wish to clone an encrypted Mac drive and volumes as well. You can also choose to ‘Schedule’ Periodic Backup’ to create timely backups.

This amazing disk cloning service stands out for two reasons, it’s ease-of-use and high compatibility. It supports all the commonly used OS X versions including the latest MacOS Mojave. Download this app for MacBook Pro now!

7. Photos Exif Editor (Best Exif Data & Editor For Mac)

Editing photo metadata or EXIF data was never this easy. Meet Photos Exif Editor, an ultimate batch photo editing tool for your Mac.

For people unaware what EXIF Data is, it’s basically a set of data attached to every image you capture. It includes basic parameters such as date, time, location, camera settings etc. This can be immensely useful info, when you might want to examine how a particular picture is taken, what are its shutter speed or ISO. Moreover, you can certainly edit and modify those set of info using an Exif data editor.

Presenting, Photos Exif Editor a fast and easy-to-use Mac software to read, write and modify metadata of single or thousands of images in one-go. You can manually manipulate the GPS coordinates of images to change its location. Rename multiple files at once, create EXIF Presets for repeated metadata editing to speed up the process.

It’s one of the best Mac apps to view, edit and modify EXIF, IPTC & XMP metadata. The Mac software supports various common photo formats including RAW image file format.

8. Cisdem Video Player for Mac (Best Media Player on Mac)

A universal video player with an impressive set of features to play up to 5K resolution videos without any jerks or tearing.

You saw that coming, right? Talking about the Best media player and not mentioning Cisdem’s Video Player is certainly not possible. It’s one of the most popular and utilized OS X apps that comes with interactive interface to play both audio and video. The video player is known for its smooth playback assistance offering crystal clear views.

With Cisdem Video Player, you don’t require to download any Codec pack, it lets you directly play WMV, FLV, MKV, AVCHD, AVI etc. videos on your Mac Machine. Best part? Unlike other media player for Mac, Cisdem allows you to automatically load subtitle files for the movie.

Looking to convert your video files for other Apple devices? Cisdem does that too for you with an optional in-app purchase. The video player is designed to support more than 50 audio and video formats. As soon as install the app, it’s ready to go!

9. Tweak Photos (Best Batch Photos Editor for Mac)

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Most popular photo editing app that lets you brighten single or thousands of photos in a few clicks.

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Tweak Photos is a brilliant package featuring an attractive interface, powerful filters, plethora of customization, adjustment tools and a lot more. This OS X app is available for just $4.99 on Mac app store.

From performing basic editing like renaming, resizing, cropping, simple color fixes, format conversions to advanced editing like applying complex photo filters, watermarking, multi-layer management, Tweak Photos does all for you.

You can download this amazing photo editor for Mac to de-noise bulk images, change texture/stylize, auto-correct orientations, blur multiple images, add frames and other artistic elements to batch photos at once. And just everything to create vivid and dazzling photo collection.

10. iSkysoft PDF Editor (Best PDF File Editor for Mac)

A super-smooth Mac software for editing PDF files easily & quickly.

iSkysoft’s PDF Editor is an ultimate solution to edit PDF documents without compromising file formatting. You can download this OS X app to get a complete suit of PDF editing tools to manipulate texts, images, links and other elements present in a PDF file.

Considered as one of the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, you can download this Mac software for easy editing, cropping, rotating, extracting, splitting, adding watermarks, altering background colours and a lot more.

Download this free PDF File Editor to quickly edit, convert, create, merge & convert scanned PDF files with ease. Not only this, iSkysoft enables you to protect your PDF files with passwords, you can set permissions for other users to perform specific functions like editing, commenting or printing. It’s one of the best Mac app available to share your PDFs to Email, Google Drive, Evernote and Dropbox in one-click.

Best Mac Apps You Need To Install On Your New Machine!

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The MacOS app ecosystem is certainly packed with a lot of hidden gems. All the aforementioned Mac software & utilities are great to get you started. For the least frustration and better efficiency, download these handy extras now!

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