Sep 08, 2017  iTerm2 is the terminal app that you can install on the Mac device and hence get the better advantages rather than the pre-installed terminal of the Mac. As we know that most of the hacking tasks are carried through the commands that are generally processed inside the terminal only. Screenshots on the Mac are pretty awesome, and there are three ways to take a screen shot with your Mac: Command + Shift + 4 and you’ll get a crosshair that you can drag with your mouse to capture exactly what you want.; Command + Shift + 4 at the same time and then let them go, then hit the Spacebar. Now you can click on any window you want and take a shot of that entire window, shadow.

If you’re an advanced user of Mac OS X, it’s very likely that you know what Terminal.app is. If you’re not, the Terminal is an application included in every version of OS X into the Utilities folder which provides a command line interface to manually control your Mac. In this roundup I’ve collected the best links about Terminal.app: you’ll find the best commands, hacks and tips to. Apr 19, 2019  Open Terminal using Spotlight Search. One of the quickest and easiest ways to open Terminal on Mac is with Spotlight Search. 1) If you have the Spotlight Search button in your menu bar, click it. Otherwise, you can use the keyboard shortcut Command + Space. 2) Type in “Terminal”. 3) You should see the Terminal application under Top Hit at the top of your results. Even if you aren't a sinister evildoer, there could be times when you need to get into a computer without the password. It's quite easy to do on a Mac, and learning how to do it can help.

You turn on your MacBook and feel that something is wrong: some files have disappeared, or new files were added. You wonder if someone has been watching your computer.

So, how to tell if someone is remotely accessing your MacBook? You need to check your logs, verify that no new users were created, make sure that remote login, screen sharing and remote management are disabled, and no spyware is running on your computer.

First things first. If you suspect that someone is controlling your laptop and if there is a chance that they watching you thru the webcam immediately apply a cover on laptop’s webcam. You can find my favorite webcam covers here.

What is remote access and how is it configured on MacBooks?

There are three ways to access MacOS remotely: allow remote logins from another computer, enable Screen Sharing or allow access by using Remote Desktop. Both ways are legitimate, but if you don’t remember doing any of them you need to know how to turn on and off those possibilities.

Remote login to MacOS

Computers that run MacOS as an operating system can log in to your Mac using Secure Shell (SSH). Steps to enable remote login are the following:

1. Go to System Preferences. You can get there by clicking on the apple icon on the left of the top bar. After you clicked on apple icon you will see a drop-down menu where you should click on System Preferences menu item.
2. Find Sharing folder and double click. Click on Remote Login checkbox on the left.
3. Now you have the option to allow access either for all user or only specific users.

Once Remote Login is enabled then users with access can use SSH to log in and browse your computer’s contents.

Access to Mac screen using Screen Sharing

If you need help from IT to make changes on your MacBook or maybe you are collaborating on a project and want to share your screen you can enable Screen Sharing. Steps to enable as follows:

1. Go to System Preferences.
2. Find Sharing folder and double click. Click on Screen Sharing checkbox on the left.
3. Allow access either for all user or only specific users.

Now on another Mac (from which you want to access to your Mac) start Screen Sharing app. You can start it by clicking Command and Space buttons. In a popup form type Sharing and hit Enter. Type your computer name. In my case, I had to type in “dev-pros-MacBook-Pro.local”.

A new window will pop up with the shared screen of another computer. Now you can control the screen.

Remote Desktop with Remote Management

Finally, it is possible to login to a computer with MacOS by enabling Remote Desktop. Steps to enable as follows:

1. Go to System Preferences.
2. Find Sharing folder and double click. Click on Remote Management check box on the left.
3. Allow access either for all user or only specific users.
4. There will be different Sharing options where you can fine-tune the type of access to allow: observe, change settings, delete, copy and even restart the computer.

Now you can access this Mac from Apple Remote Desktop – it’s an application you can buy from Apple Store and at the time of writing it’s cost was $79.99.

If your Mac is being monitored, it will show this image (two rectangles) in the top right-hand corner near your computer time:

When that symbol appears, you will be able to tell if you are being monitored. You can also disconnect the viewer by clicking on Disconnect option:

You can also click on “Open Sharing Preferences…” which will open Sharing folder in System Preferences.

Since the question you had was if someone remotely accessing your computer then the chances are that you don’t need any of sharing capabilities mentioned above.

In this case, check all options on Sharing folder under System Preferences to make sure that nobody is allowed to access it and turn off (uncheck) all options.

Verify if new users were created

As we’ve seen already remote login or sharing options require assigning access roles to the local users. If your system was hacked it is very likely that the hacker has added a new user to access it. To find out all users in MacOS perform the following steps:

1. Start Terminal app by either going to Applications and then Utilities folder or clicking Command and Space and typing Terminal in the popup window.
2. In the Terminal window type:

On my laptop it listed dev1, nobody, root and daemon.

If you see the accounts, you do not recognize then they probably have been created by a hacker.

In order to find when the user account was used to log in last time type the following command into the Terminal:
last

For each account, MacOS will list the times and dates of logins. If the login to any of the accounts happened at an abnormal time, it is possible that a hacker used a legitimate account to log in.

Check the logs

It may be useful to check the system logs for any possible access issues.

In order to find a system log, click on Go option in the top menu or simultaneously click Shift, Command and G. In the “Go to Folder” popup type: /var/log and hit Enter.

Now find system.log file and scan for word sharing. For instance, I found following screen sharing log entries:

These were log entries when someone logged in to my system remotely:

Check for spyware

If you are still suspecting that spyware is running on your machine you can use a third party application like Little Snitch which monitors applications, preventing or permitting them to connect to attached networks through advanced rules. Setting up the rules for Little Snitch, however, could be complicated.

One of the common spyware applications is a keystroke logger or keylogger. Keyloggers used to be apps that record the letters you type on the keyboard, but they significantly in last years. Suffice to day that keyloggers can take screenshots every 30 seconds or even track your chat activity, including the messages sent to you.

I believe that keyloggers are much greater security threat because they are easier to install and the powerful features they offer. Check my article about keyloggers here: How to know if my Mac has a keylogger

Security Best Practices

1.Change passwords regularly
One thing you should immediately if you are suspecting that someone is logging to your system is to change your password. And the password should be complex enough so that other people wouldn’t be able to guess it. This means avoiding using things like birthdate, first or last name or relatives, house or apartment number, etc. As a rule of thumb the password must be long enough (8 – 32 characters) and include at least 3 of the following character types:

• Uppercase letter (A-Z)
• Lowercase letter (a-z)
• Digit number (0-9)
• Special characters such as ~!@#$%^&*

2.Enable Security Updates by clicking on “Automatically keep my Mac up to date” in Software Update folder in System Preferences.

3. Install Antivirus. I received a lot of emails where people described suspicious activity on their Macs. I found that in about 60-70% cases, the culprit was malwareand not someone breaking into the computer. It’s a myth that Macs don’t get viruses. If you need proof check the next article I wrote after testing 12 antivirus programs after injecting 117 malware samples on my Mac:

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The Terminal app lets you control your Mac. In this article, we explain what is Mac Terminal, how to use it, and what it can do for you. In many macreports.com articles, we recommend our readers to use the Terminal app to troubleshoot various problems that our readers may be having with your Mac. Basically, Terminal is a command-line interface (CLI – or the language you type to interact with your computer) for macOS. It is an app included in the Mac operating system.

What is the Mac Terminal

Terminal is a utility app. It lets you enter commands in the command line. The Terminal app provides a command-line interface to let you control and customize your Mac. The command-line interface (CLI) is called bash (Bourne again shell).

See also: macOS Won’t Go To Sleep? Fix

How to open Terminal on your Mac

There are a number of different ways to open Terminal. So you may do one of the following:

As I stated above Terminal an app that can be found in /Applications/Utilities. To open it:

1. Open Finder
2. Click Applications
3. Click Utilities
4. And Click Terminal

Another way to open the Terminal app is to use Spotlight (Spotlight not working?). Here is how:

1. Open the Spotlight window (you may press the Command and Space keys together or you may use the search icon in the menu bar)
2. Type Terminal
3. When it is highlighted, click to open it.

And a different way to open is to use Launchpad. Here is how:

1. Click Launchpad in the Dock
2. In the search field, type Terminal
3. And the click Terminal

Now, you’ll see a small window open on your desktop, as you can see below. The window will say your username and the word bash in the title. The window will include your last login info. Now you can run commands. Simply type it and hit enter to execute. Let’s try.

To quit Terminal, you may go to Terminal > Quit Terminal.

To close a shell session, enter exit and hit enter.

See also: How Do I Password Protect My Files & Folders In macOS?

Basic Terminal Commands

How To Hack A Mac With Terminal

If you look at the Terminal window above, it says:

Serhats-MacBook-Pro:~ fskurt$

This means that the user (fskurt – this is me) is logged in to a Mac named Serthats-MacBook-Pro. The ~ sing indicates that my current folder is my home folder.

If you want to use Terminal, you need to know the most important commands. In this article, we will not give a lot of details but we will give you a few examples to give you ideas:

Please note that be extra careful when executing the sudo command. This command requires you to be logged in with an administrator account.

Example 1:

Let’s use Terminal to lists files and directories within a directory. Enter the following code in Terminal and hit enter:

In this command, ls is short for list. -l is an option, short for long. This means that with this option ls command will list out files and directories in long list format. And ~ is object. ~ means home folder. So this command will list all of our files in our home folder in a long list format.

Example 2:

Let’s ping a website. Please note that we can also do this using Network Utility.

Enter the following command in Terminal:

Migrate Mac To Mac

Please note that completing this command may take a little longer.

Similarly, you can also run a traceroute command:

Example 3:

Do you want your Mac talking? Here is how you can do this. Enter the following command:

and hit enter.

Now your computer will say hello macreports.com

Example 4:

You can restart your Mac. Simply enter the following command in Terminal:

Keyboard shortcuts

Here are some useful shortcuts that can help you save time when using Terminal:

• New window: Command-N
• New tab: Command-T
• Next Tab: Control-Tab
• Previous Tab: Control-Shift-Tab
• New command: Shift-Command-N
• Show or hide tab bar: Shift-Command-T
• Edit title: Shift-Command-I
• Edit background-color: Option-Command-I
• Make fonts bigger or smaller: Command-Plus (+) or (-)
• Close all: Option-Shift-Command-W
• Page up or down: Command-Page Up or Page Down
• Line up or down: Option-Command-Page Up or Page Down
• Scroll to top or bottom: Command-Home or End
• Make fonts bigger or smaller: Command-Plus (+) or Minus (-)

How to change the look of the Terminal window

You can customize your Terminal window. You can customize many elements such as colors, fonts, background styles, etc. Here is how:

1. Open the Terminal app
2. Click Terminal and Preferences (from the Terminal’s menu bar).
3. Click the Profiles tab.

On the left pane, there are a number of pre-existing profiles. You can select one. And then customize it. The one you are using will say “Default” under it.

If you want to change it, select one then click the Default icon.

You can also further customize this profile if you want to do so. You can also create your own custom profiles by clicking the (+) plus sign. You can also remove any of the pre-set profiles by clicking the (-) minus sign. You can also rename a profile by double-clicking the name of the profile and entering a new name.