Lock symbol in get info mac mac#
The next morning, we found the Mac still at the passcode screen. Not wanting to interrupt the wipe process, we let the Mac sit overnight in this state.
Lock symbol in get info mac pro#
Just as with the lock scenario, within about ten seconds of issuing the command, the target MacBook Pro shut down and then rebooted to the same grey screen requesting the passcode. The final confirmation for sending a Remote Wipe command.
This time it also asked us to set a passcode, and informed us that a wipe “may take up to a day to complete.” After logging back in to iCloud on another Mac, we sent the wipe command. Now it was time to pull out the big gun and wipe the system. Thankfully, it booted back into our user’s desktop and all the data was intact. The Mac processed for a moment and then rebooted. Our questions about the remote lock answered, we put the hard drive back, booted, and entered the correct passcode. The iCloud “lock” feature, therefore, is not secure if the individual in possession of your Mac has the skills or time to physically pull the hard drive. The drive mounted and we were able to see the data on the system drive, and copy it to another drive if necessary. To see how far we could go, we then pulled the system drive and connected it to another Mac with a SATA to USB adapter. Only the “R” key, which takes the user to Lion or Mountain Lion’s recovery partition is functional. While in a locked state, a user can reboot the Mac, but boot modifier keys such as Alt/Option to select a different drive and “T” to put the Mac into target disk mode, don’t work. We then attempted to access the data on the drives. The passcode screen which appears when the Mac is both in “Lock” and “Wipe” states.
Lock symbol in get info mac code#
Successive failed attempts at entering the correct code will cause the system to prevent further attempts for increasing amounts of time.
Instead of taking the user to the OS X desktop or login screen, when the Mac reboots it presents a grey screen requesting the correct unlock passcode. Proceeding with the lock will cause the target Mac to reboot within about ten seconds of sending the command. This displays your options for locking, wiping, or playing a message or sound on your device.Ĭhoose “Remote Lock” and iCloud will ask you for a four digit numeric passcode in order to unlock the Mac should you eventually recover it. Click on the Mac you wish to wipe or lock and then, once it’s located on the map, click the blue circle with the “i” character. There are two options for iCloud users who fear their Mac may be stolen: lock and wipe. Once logged in, we entered the “Find My iPhone” section and waited for it to locate our victim MacBook Pro. On another Mac, we opened our Web browser and logged into iCloud’s Web interface using the iCloud account of the primary system account on the Mac. We set it to the primary user account (not the one we created for this test) and then closed System Preferences. Doing so prompted OS X to inform us that Find My Mac can only be activated on one user account per machine. This is done by heading to System Preferences > iCloud and checking the “Find My Mac” box. Our first step was to turn on Find My Mac. Curious about whether Find My Mac would wipe the entire drive or just the user account, we added a second account to the Mac, with both set as administrators.
Our victim for this test is a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro on OS X 10.8 with two internal drives (we used an Other World Computing Data Doubler to replace the optical drive with a second hard drive) - a 240 GB OWC Mercury 6G SSD as the main system drive, and a 1 TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT HDD for data storage - and a 2 TB LaCie P’9230 external Time Machine drive connected via USB. We set out to answer these questions by wiping one of our own Macs. How does the process work? Does it wipe all drives connected to the Mac or just the system drive? Is the data recoverable? Honan indicated that his data, which was unfortunately not backed up, was likely lost for good, it got us wondering about what exactly happens when a remote wipe is triggered via iCloud. We’ve known about remotely wiping iOS devices since the introduction of Find My iPhone in 2009, but Find My Mac, and the corresponding ability to initiate a remote wipe, was introduced only last fall as part of the new iCloud service.Īfter Mr. Last week’s news that Wired journalist Mat Honan had his Mac remotely wiped as part of a devastating attack by hackers raised many questions about the heretofore little discussed topic of remotely wiping a Mac via Apple’s iCloud and Find My Mac service.