“Have you ever been away from your Mac and wanted to shut down, restart, or needed to open an application remotely, but didn’t have access to anything except your iPhone? Well, I am going to show you how to do these tasks with AppleScript and Mail,” Cory Bohon reports for TUAW.
Bohon reports, “This process is fairly easy and involves creating a simple AppleScript and some Mail rules. Note that since these rules will cause your Mac to perform the listed action when they run, be careful when testing!”
Bohon covers:
• Creating the AppleScripts
– Shutdown
– Restart
– Sleep
• Saving your AppleScript
• Setting the Mail rules
• Running the script remotely
Full article here.
Sounds like a security nightmare
I’m sending shutdown messages to Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove right now.
< crossing fingers >
No wonder the stock is down!
Ampar:
I’d second that… and include the chimp himself.
This does sound like a window to Mac email viruses.
I agree with ApplePi…..holy crap…
@ApplePI
It is of a sort, but it’s one created by the user.
While I think the applications he proposes is kinda cool, doing something that’s a recieve-response would be awesome, running some app in the background (video rendering?), send an e-mail, a min later you get an e-mail response with a bunch of info about what’s going on with the render. Sys admins could probably us this for getting back basic non-security info about servers (load, access to X, # of users, currently running processes, hd/memory/DB usage etc). Could be very handy for finding out what’s happening without directly connecting and doing anything to your server.
re: “I’m sending shutdown messages to Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove right now.
< crossing fingers >”
Here’s hoping that they can do the same to you!
Karl Rove has a Mac? Is that how he’s able to channel Machiavelli?
Others of us might like to suggest asking Obama, Hillary, Al Gore and Arianna to shutdown (or at least begin speaking intelligently). Or we could leave politics off the board and stick to loving Apple and despising MicroWorthless.
“Others of us might like to suggest asking Obama, Hillary, Al Gore and Arianna to shutdown (or at least begin speaking intelligently”
someone defending Rush, Bush, and Rove who wants OTHERS to speak intelligently?!?
what color is the sky in your world?
at least if you set this up you can include in the rules things like what address it must be from etc. you could make this fairly secure with a little intelligence an ingenuity.
…… well Jay i guess you are out.
Well Ampar, I’m sending scripts to AlGore right now to shut down his 3×30″ Cinemas…
Walk the walk AlGore.
Hitler.
Discussion’s over.
This is really stupid. Major security risk considering anyone could send an email to your account. I’m not even sure an Applescript would require your password to run. I hope Apple close this loophole soon. After all someone could send an Applescript to run rm -f in the terminal and delete the whole drive.
Remote desktop is desgined for this use. Sending an email from a phone to control your mac is asking for trouble.
Thanks, Scot. I’m gonna steal that one….
Shen – My point is to keep political drivel off this board. There are other more appropriate places for such discussions where intelligent (and not so intelligent) people may have reasoned debate. There is plenty of room for intelligent people on both sides. Disagreeing with someone does not necessarily make you brilliant and them stupid, ignorant or foolish.
Reasonably intelligent people on both the left and right would conclude that your personal attack was cheap and childish. Again, I’m simply suggesting that meaningless political comments of no value be kept off the boards.
LOL…
This is not a security threat.
[/shaking head]
@shen
Yah you could setup some rules, but unfortunately it’s absurdly simple to spoof whatever from address you want to, right in the mailbox settings you can select your from/reply-to address, even if it’s not the same as the e-mail box you are checking. If you are savvy enough to use terminal to directly connect to an open SMTP relay (ie, someone didn’t setup their box correctly) you can spoof any from address/info/etc you want to and it will look legit. e-mail is not the most secure form of communication.
Now if you encrypted your e-mails and included a passphrase of some kind in the body of the e-mail along with whatever command you want it to do.
I’m going to send one to hitlary and obama Hussein!!
Har har
Of course, you could use the AppleScript trigger system with PhoneValet just as easily – then you can use your iPhone and call, or even your cheap ass Nokia phone.
@rahrens
“No wonder the stock is down!”
please see:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/correlation
With OldMacfan on this one:
Go ahead, send all the emails you like to any mac user you like. … Unless your intended recipients have created some apple scripts and created the rules in apple mail to run those scripts and told you exactly what you need to include in your email in order to invoke those rules, all you’re going to do is waste your time sending emails.
ppl… read the article and understand what it’s about before you start hyperventilating about supposed security threats.
This is not one of them.
To Me In LA:
That’s fair! But you might interrupt Al doing some intense work. You know he can Tipper on her side with those 3 thirty inchers.
“I’d second that… and include the chimp himself.”
Tipper Gore?
Yes, by all means, talk the talk about free speech being important, but when it counters your ideals, by all means it must be shut down (never walking the walk).
I don’t like liberal ideals spouted, but I don’t hammer them on stating what they believe. That’s what makes this country truly great. But if it’s “insert conservative name here” then they should have no voice, and we should take those ideas and ideals away…
Hypocritical to the end, and Fascist in mentality… which begs the question: Barack supporter?
Macromancer:
It was a joke…
@Re: Ampar…
Uh… I think you confused Ampar’s post which is HUMOROUS with political speech. As is “Me In LA” ‘s post about Al Gore.
turn on your humor gene, chill, and leave the political rants to shen.
@Ampar
“You know he can Tipper on her side with those 3 thirty inchers.”
Buddy, I must say it again… you crack me up! MDN should issue you a per-joke stipend. Just one of the things that keeps me coming back to this website…
Out of curiosity, does the writing work you do for a living include humor, or are we just the lucky beneficiaries of your wit?
Keep ’em coming!
its a good idea. It’ll help me a lot
Datadude,
Only a rampant retard would find an idiot like Ampar anywhere near funny. Congratulations, you qualify in spades.
7over – you saved me some typing. I was reading what some have said about this being a security hole and could hardly believe it. Some people just shoot from the hip I guess.
Now I wish I could send a magic email that would wake my machine.
Ampar, I’m with TheDataDude, great material and we’re all curious, tell us more.
Thanks, The DataDude and makemineamac!
It’s difficult to make technical writing humorous unless you take your stuff too seriously like Rob Enderle.
LOL…
This is not a security threat.
Then post your email.
After all if there’s no threat….
And thanks, Jim – TIV.
“turn on your humor gene, chill, and leave the political rants to shen.”
That’s funny! But sadly, I think a few lost souls are missing that gene and possibly a few others.
Yes, by all means, talk the talk about free speech being important, but when it counters your ideals, by all means it must be shut down (never walking the walk).
“We embrace diversity and tolerance, but only for our views”.
(This is aimed down both sides of the political aisle, BTW.)
To Ampar:
Tipper on her side and let the ocean fill with crude?
Again, I implore you (and AlGore) to walk the walk…can you say Exxon Valdez?
Hmmph.
In the spirit of today’s celebs like K-Fed an J-Lo, I have created…
Barack Hussein Obama = B-Ho.
Tell your friends.
And if course,
Hillary Clinton = Hi-C.
To Me In LA:
“Hmmmph”
Don’t you mean “Harumphh”? Throw in a dagnabbit if you’re up to it.
Oh, and “Exxon Valdez”. There. What do I win?
@ C1
Did you forget to add a Mc-J‘s?
@ Ampar
You, sir, have won the grand prize! A photo of the “S/R Mediterranean” autographed by none other than Capn J. Hazelwood himself!
“Did you forget to add a Mc-J’s?”
Only if McCain is able.
Kinda scary…I think i’ll stick with secured SSH tunneling…