Apple security: Myth or magic?
Recently, I had to do some work on a remote Linux server. Usually, in such cases, I get command-line access to the box through a Secure Shell session, using the free Putty client for Microsoft Windows.
At the time however, someone had a Macbook notebook nearby, so I decided to use that machine instead. The nice thing about the newer Macs is, that, underneath the snazzy OS X user interface, they are built on the Darwin base operating system, which is a Unix OS based on the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), a set of standards that specify how an implementation of UNIX should operate. I could use the built-in SSH on this Mac.
Ultimately, I was foiled by the security features of the Mac. I found that SSH attempted to log me in as the account owner of the Mac itself, rather than letting me to supply my own log-in name and associated password. In effect, I couldn't log on as anyone except the owner of the Mac account, at least by default. Because I didn't have an account on that Mac and my friend with the Mac didn't have an account on my Linux box, I couldn't log in.
