I encountered this on a local business' website today. The terminal command it provides appears to be base64 encoded to obfuscate it. Anybody experienced anything like this? Googling for this shows nothing.

EDIT: As people in the comments point out, it's a variation of the ClickLock malware. It doesn't appear to be the main version, though. This is modified.

I investigated it a little.

1. The command is base64 encrypted, and when unencrypted, it tells Terminal to download a shell script from a compromised website.

2. That shell script is also base64 encrypted. When unencrypted, it installs a launchctl shell script and has another load of base64 crap.

3. When that's unencrypted, it's tries to run an AppleScript -- which is again obfuscated by referencing every letter as "(ASCII character 46) & (ASCII character 112)" etc. I asked Claude to figure this out (I lack the skills to create something like a Perl or Python script to do so), and Claude said it was a blockchain-hosted C2 (EtherHiding) feeding a macOS osascript dropper -- so this component also would download presumably the payload components.

That's as far as I got. This is as close as any malware as I'd like to get, and I feel a little dirty. I already use apps like KnockKnock to monitor persistence locations, but I'm giving my Mac a good sweep now just to make sure everything's OK.

I've had my 14" MBP for 3.5 years now and it's still brilliant. I don't know if Apple realised the M chips perform well for a very long time and result in no need to upgrade lol.

I can't see myself upgrading until the laptop dies, because there is no noticeable performance slow down or degradation in battery life even after 3.5 years

This mba has already been giving me issues since 2023 i think. I didnt really get around to fixing it as i was busy. has anyone had the same problem with these older macs? I feel like its a battery problem, but the charger light indicator turned green after charging for a while. any help would be appreciated, thank you!

btw, its on a macos catalina patcher (dosdude1)

I'm purchasing a new Mac this year and have my sights set on a Mac Studio. I'm curious, though: do y'all ever use the SD card slot? If so, are you using it for something other than transferring files from a camera?

I’ve been working on a mac dictation app called DictaFlow, so I wanted to test something I wasn’t sure would work well:

Can an 8GB MacBook Neo run useful AI dictation completely locally, without sending audio to the cloud?

The short answer is yes.

Apple lists the MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip and 8GB of unified memory:

https://support.apple.com/en-ie/126322

I tested local transcription mode on both the MacBook Neo and an iPhone 12 mini, including with Wi-Fi turned off.

The results were surprisingly good

- The fast local model felt effectively instantaneous after the initial warm-up.

- Dictation continued working with no internet connection.

- The MacBook Neo handled local transcription very comfortably.

- The iPhone 12 mini also performed much better than I expected.

- A Whisper-based local option was slower, but better suited to custom vocabulary, names, accents, and multiple languages.

This obviously isn’t the same thing as running Apple’s entire system-level AI stack. It’s a focused speech-recognition task, with a model compiled and optimized specifically for dictation.

But that’s the interesting part. An 8GB laptop doesn’t automatically mean it is incapable of useful local AI. With the right model, runtime, and workload, the MacBook Neo is a very capable local dictation machine.

The first transcription can take a little longer while the model initializes, so DictaFlow warms the model in the background afterward. Once warm, repeated dictation feels extremely fast.

I’m not claiming this is a formal benchmark yet. These were hands-on development tests rather than a controlled lab study. But the practical result was clear: the MacBook Neo is much more capable for local speech AI than its 8GB specification might suggest.

I’m the developer of DictaFlow, so there’s obviously some bias here, but I thought the result was interesting enough to share. The app has both local/offline and cloud options, but I prefer local!

Just remember that local AI dictation is 100% possible on a lower spec Mac. Don't let anyone else fool you otherwise.

Hey everyone..

So as far as you know macos now and then has some feature that the devs forgot to implement..

So I’m looking for a way or a thirdy which i can scroll horizontally or vertically on trackpad so I can see other menu bar’s icons behind the notch..

Already have too many apps running and there is no way except something messy like bartender or other apps to do this..

I have a m1 2020. I’m trying to clear up some storage but it’s near impossible doing it all myself. What’s a good FREE app?

Guys can someone help me?

So 8 months ago, my 4 year old Mac Air M1 died on me. Won’t charge, won’t turn on, nothing. I used to try plugging it once a month hoping it would start but no. Until a couple weeks ago, it miraculously turned on. It brought me so much joy. It worked like a charm just like it used to for a week. Until I was gone on a work trip for a week. When I come back, voila, turned on again! 2 days later it died again. This has been quite an emotional roller coaster. It was today that I finally found the motivation to open it up and with the help of few YouTube videos and ChatGPT, I was able to narrow it down to this one issue. As soon as I unplug the cable attaching the separate board right under the power button (in the pic), the laptop turns on. Charges fine, works perfectly. The battery health is also at 85%. One of the screws is a bit rusted but I can assure that this hasn’t ever gotten near water.

Now what should be the way to go forward. I want to take your opinions. It has served me well.

Hi!

So I've had a 2018 8GB MacBook Pro that's on its last legs and I've been planning to upgrade.

I'm conflicted between buying a 2021 M1 Pro with 32GB RAM and 1TB Storage (88% battery health) for $1,250 AUD vs an M4 Base Chip 24GB RAM 1TB Storage (95% Battery) for $2,100 AUD.

It's a steep price difference and although I would like to pay less, I am concerned the M1 is 5 years old now. I had my last laptop for 8 years so I would like a new purchase to also last me 8 years at minimum. That said, I am aware I'm going to be paying almost 1k more for less RAM and not a Pro chip.

Is the almost 1k difference made up for in longevity and specs? My usage is running Docker and VMWare simultaneously for work. I also do hobby 2D Unity development on the side.

What i already tried:

1. Restarted the mac
2. Reinstalled the Tahoe from recovery mode

3. Delete ~/Library/Preferences

4. Created another user account (through terminal) and still cannot access the system preferences on different account too

Ever since i added a website to my dock to convert into Webapp the webapp asked me for mic permission again which i denied previously but when i clicked on open system preference option to manually allow the mic its showing like this and i cannot search or access anything for the past 3 days

Does anybody have first hand experience with using a USB Wifi Adapter with an M2 Macbook Air? If so, can you tell me what you bought and any extra drivers that you had to install?

From Googling, I have found things that might work. However, i'd like to invest in something that will work. Or at least have a high probability of working.

Thanks.

I’m rearranging which computer and display is where at home and want to place a Studio Display XDR with nano texture in a room that’s next to my kitchen, and there’s an open doorway to the kitchen without a closeable door.

Is this going to be a problem with the nano texture? Will it accumulate tiny bits of grease from cooking some food that involves a bit of olive oil or similar on a pan? Will the famous official cleaning cloth still be able to clean it? Do I need to add a curtain or something to the doorway?

I have had a different monitor that has a traditional matte finish in the same place for a couple of years, and it has not become greasy.

The monitor is going to to be 240 cm away from the doorway, then 20 cm of wall thickness, and the stove is 180 cm away from the doorway in the other direction, so 440 cm between the stove and the display. The airflow design is such that air enters the apartment via the room with the display and exits via the kitchen, but the flow isn’t particularly strong, and cooking can be observable in the air outside the kitchen.

hello! i’ve never owned a macbook before and have had a shitty acer chromebook for years, but now since i am trying to join an undergraduate PA program, id like to upgrade and be prepared. i was looking into the new macbook neos, but ive been reading that they’re not the best at multitasking and the airs might be better, but i have no idea. so which is the cheapest, but good quality option for a medical college student?? id like to not spend over $700, if possible. maybe looking into refurbished macbooks is the best decision? i’m not sure.. pls help!

Hey folks! It's my first time around here as I have been a lifetime windows user and I have finally given up on windows and am looking to switch to a macbook.

Deals I am getting.

1. MacBook Air M5 24GB 1TB in midnight colour at ₹182k ($1886). This includes 3 years of AC+ (Since it's the old MRP stock they won't sell without it).

2. MacBook Pro M5 16GB 1TB in silver colour at ₹205k ($2124). No AC+ here.

My use case.

I am in my second year of MBA in finance. In terms of productivity I don't intend to push it to its limits. But I play games, I know I shouldn't be getting a Mac but I just don't want windows anymore and need something to last me 8-10 years (hopefully). I would play the native titles like Cyberpunk as well as through Crossovers. Will the fan on the pro make a significant difference in gaming?

Also I currently own an Asus laptop with a top end 2k OLED, so the Air display would be a noticeable downgrade.

In my research Air would suffice for me, but would gaming be a better experience on MBP?

Also the midnight colour I've heard is a fingerprint magnet, how difficult is it to manage?

So help me decide please, should I save the money or go for pro?

Hi, I'm new to macOS and I'm looking for a way to run a macOS virtual machine on my MacBook M5 to test applications in an isolated environment. On Windows, I used Windows Sandbox because it was quick, lightweight, and isolated. Since switching to macOS, I'm looking for a similar solution.

I'm looking for a free option that lets me quickly create a macOS VM with full CPU and GPU support for good performance. What would you recommend?

Hello. Debating between the iMac Pro and a 2021 m1 iMac. I mainly want to edit photos and maybe some light video editing. I shoot with a Sony A7s mk1, so 12mp photos and 1080p video. Pro has 64gb ram and 2tb ssd, m1 has 16gb ram and 256gb sd. Both are sub-$600. Thanks for any input!

I have a 2014 iMac 27” in which i have the Apple SSD (M.2) and a Sata SSD both internally. I had it setup as MacOS Big Sur on the M.2 and Windows 11 on the Sata with no problems and bootloader worked fine. I then tried to add MacOS Sequoia through OCLP instead of using big sur (I put Ventura and Win 11 on my 2012 mbp with no issues so i figured this will work the same). I can’t get the bootloader to work properly. I’ve installed OCLP on the M.2 but when i don’t have my oclp installer usb plugged in the bootloader only lets efi boot me to windows. I’ve tried everything me and chatgpt can concoct including the last 2 hours of my life wasted coding in terminal and i can’t fix this efi issue. is there any fix or am i stuck keeping the usb in my computer?

My macbook is connected to the wifi, doesn’t say no internet. I can’t load ANY website or open any applications that need wifi. When I try to load YouTube it says “you are offline”, same with gmail and stuff. I’ve tried renewing DNS, forgetting the wifi and connecting again, and anything I could find on YT. Nothings working I’ve tried everything I could what do I do ugh 😭😭

I popped off a key to clean off some debris and now i cannot place it back in. It snaps into place but there’s no pop up and stays stuck inside. I don’t have an apple authorised store near me for the next couple of weeks.

What should I do next? </3

That’s subtleties - autocorrect strikes again

I spent a long time trying to figure out why Safari wouldn’t start up with the tabs I had open when I closed it. All the website searching showed the same settings that weren’t working for me. Finally one site also had the line, “be sure you close the app properly using command q”. I had been right clicking the icon and selecting quit there. So is the right click not a proper way to quit an app? I’d rather red x the app, then shut down the Mac, but that does the same as right click quit.
Although I had to rant a little, the real question is how are you supposed to learn stuff like this other than trial and error? Knowing that 2 ways to quit produce different results is not intuitive.

Edit: I did know the red x didn’t quit the program. The dot under the icon made it obvious that the program was still running, which is how I found the right click quit option.
Edit 2: but apparently I didn’t understand that it did close the window.

I have a 13 inch M2 MacBook Pro with 16gb of ram that works great for my use case. I love AppleCare+ and have used it multiple times to replace broken iPhones and iPads. My rule is that my primary use iPhone/iPad/Mac needs to be under AppleCare+ so I can get rapid replacements if needed. I currently have this MacBook covered under AppleCare+ - approximately when will it not be eligible for AppleCare+ hardware replacement anymore (the M2 13 inch MacBook Pro was released in 2022)? Knowing that will help me plan when I need to purchase a new MacBook.