“A new routine in High Sierra runs automatically weekly and checks the firmware of the Mac that is installed on to check for modifications that may jeopardize the security of the machine,” Mike Wuerthele reports for AppleInsider. “”
“First spotted by The Eclectic Light Company blog on Sunday the ‘eficheck’ routine in High Sierra compares the computer’s ID and the installed firmware against Apple’s database of known-good firmware revisions,” Wuerthele reports. “Should the checksum fail, the user will be invited to send a report to Apple.”
“The new utility was coded by was coded by Apple engineers Corey Kallenberg, Xeno Kovah, and Nikolaj Schlej. Kovah issued a series of Tweets about the feature that have since been deleted,” Wuerthele reports. “AppleInsider has confirmed that the routine exists in the ‘gold master’ of macOS High Sierra. Additionally, we have spoken to sources within Apple not authorized to speak for the company that the reports disseminated by the engineer over the weekend are accurate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s good to have security checks, of course, and the user can choose whether or not to send the data to Apple via the dialog box that appears if a firmware change has been detected.
I’m waiting to hear whether MS Office 2011 works (or doesn’t, possibly) and to hear of any oddities otherwise.
Microsoft has said that Office 2011 won’t be supported on High Sierra, but it was ending Office 2011 support for all the earlier Apple OS’s on October 11, anyway. The press release does not definitely say that 2011 won’t run under High Sierra, just that it has not been tested and will not be supported.
I am looking forward to a report from anybody who tries it.
Or to check whether you are running MacOS on a hackintosh.
I’m at very sure the hackintosh community can disable this feature fairly easy.
10.13 is already running on my hackintosh.. faster then any current mac.. + a GTX 1080.. its what a mac pro should be.
Apple turned my 2009 Mac Pro into a Hackintosh! Been running 10.12 fine now since release! Will probably run 10.13 as well just fine! Shame on Apple for making it obsolete when it runs it just fine!
So, are you saying you updated the EFI in your 2009 Mac Pro to the 2010 Mac Pro version? If so, it will be interesting to see how High Sierra works on it and how this EFI check will read the updated EFI. I’ve got a few old 2009s that have been “upgraded” to 2010s and have been debating on upgrading to High Sierra.
It will be great to hear about your move to High Sierra if you make that jump.
So, the guy writing the security check software can’t keep himself from discussing it on social media. I wonder if the new campus has a “Steve Jobs Elevator” for employees like this.