A hack to continue with Skype 6 3 on MacOS 10 5 8

A hack to continue with Skype 6 3 on MacOS 10 5 8

Today Skype users on MacOS 10.5.8 were surprised again that Skype rejected the login and requested to upgrade to a new version. Navigating to the new version download announced once again:

This had happened in the past and the solutions then ranged from installing every old versions of Skype (2.8) to tampering with certain system settings, last year Skype released an officially supported version 6.3 for MacOS 10.5.8 but this only lasted until today.

So I tried various things and a variation of earlier solutions did it for me which I would like to share with the community. In summary: trick Skype into thinking that you are running a higher version than 6.3.

Change 3 settings in the info.plist file

First of all quit Skype so that no Skype process is running anymore

Open info.plist with the property editor (in Finder -> Applications choose Skype, right-mouse click and choose Show Package Contents, in the new window double-click on Contents and double-click on info.plist )

Change

 
 
BuildMachineOSBuild
 12F45
 
Bundle versions string, short
 6.15
 
Bundle version
 6.15.0.330
 
 

The previous settings were for me 6.3.0.604 and 12C3103.

Close the property editor and Save the file

Change the /etc/hosts file

This prevents that your network contacts the Skype download server.

Edit the /etc/hosts file (with your editor of choice)

Enter this line

127.0.0.1 ui.skype.com

Start Skype and login again

There you go.
Lets wait and see until this solution becomes obsolete.

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72 Vulnerabilities found in macOS Sierra and Apple patches them all

72 Vulnerabilities found in macOS Sierra and Apple patches them all

Apple announced on Tuesday the availability of macOS Sierra 10.12.2, which patches a total of 72 vulnerabilities affecting various components of the operating system.

The latest version addresses flaws related to components such as Apache, Audio, Bluetooth, the kernel, IOKit, IOSurface, IOAcceleratorFamily, IOHIDFamily, Disk Images, graphics components, media services, security, and several third-party libraries.

macOS Sierra 10.12.2 also addresses the cURL vulnerabilities discovered recently during an audit sponsored by the Mozilla Secure Open Source (SOS) program.

The security holes patched with this macOS update can be exploited to cause an application to enter a denial-of-service (DoS) condition, execute arbitrary code (including with elevated privileges), obtain sensitive information, escalate privileges, leak memory data, and overwrite existing files. RC4 and 3DES have been removed as default ciphers to prevent attackers from exploiting their weaknesses.

Independent researchers and representatives of Tencent, Synopsys Software Integrity Group, Google Project Zero, Huawei, Alipay, Qihoo 360, Topsec, the UK�s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), INRIA Paris and CXSECURITY have been credited for reporting the flaws. Ian Beer of Google Project Zero and the researcher known online as �daybreaker@Minionz� have found many of the flaws.

This is the second security update released by Apple for macOS Sierra since its launch in September. The first update fixed only 16 vulnerabilities.

Apple also announced on Tuesday security updates for iCloud for Windows, iTunes for Windows and the Safari web browser. Safari 10.0.2 resolves two dozen vulnerabilities, a large majority of which affect the WebKit engine. The same WebKit flaws have also been fixed in the Windows versions of iCloud and iTunes.

On Monday, Apple released iOS 10.2, tvOS 10.1 and watchOS 3.1.1, but the Apple Watch update was quickly pulled after users reported that it bricked their devices.

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