The Sharing Preferences Dialog
Networking has been part of the Macintosh from the start and has grown steadily in functional power and ease of use. Although networking originally could be used only with Apple’s proprietary AppleTalk protocol, Apple has transitioned over to the Internet’s TCP/IP as its networking protocol of choice. Today, users have point-and-click access to enabling a complete range of built-in networking services including File, Printer and Web Sharing, remote control and more.
Apple does an excellent job of implementing a basic security rule: default settings should be the most secure. Without exception, you will see that if built-in Internet services are left in their default state, they pose no direct risk to your machine. Creating significant risk requires several steps, making it less likely to happen accidentally.
In this chapter, we talk about how to secure the Internet services built into Mac OS X through the Sharing System Preferences dialog. Securing built-in applications that provide Internet services, such as iTunes, is covered in Chapter 9, and securing third-party Internet services is covered in Chapter 10.