Notarizing Automator applications

Apple recently updated their notarization documentation to include this note:

Beginning in macOS 10.14.5, all new or updated kernel extensions and all software from developers new to distributing with Developer ID must be notarized in order to run. In a future version of macOS, notarization will be required by default for all software.

The part about “notarization will be required by default for all software” made me think, because there are a few apps that I’ve written over the years that are still useful (at least to me). All of them were built using Automator, which meant that the usual Xcode-based ways of notarizing applications wasn’t going to work for me.

With assistance by folks in the MacAdmins Slack though, I was able to develop a process that allowed me to do the following:

1. Codesign an Automator application
2. Upload the application to Apple for notarization
3. Attach the notarization to the application
4. Verify that the notarization was attached and valid.

The documentation linked below was also very helpful in figuring out how to notarize using command line tools:

• https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution/customizing_the_notarization_workflow
• https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution

For more details, please see below the jump.

Updated MigrateADMobileAccounttoLocalAccount script now available to fix password issue in macOS 10.14.4

A couple of years back, I wrote a script to assist with migrating AD mobile users to local users. I had to update it in 2018 to fix a bug, but once that issue was fixed, the script has chugged along without changes between macOS 10.13.5 and macOS 10.14.3.

However, starting with macOS 10.14.4, I was alerted to an issue with how the script worked in combination with a change on Apple’s end.

As part of the script, the following actions take place:

1. The password hash value of the account from the AuthenticationAuthority attribute of the relevant account is backed up.
2. The AuthenticationAuthority attribute is deleted from the relevant account.
3. The AuthenticationAuthority attribute is re-created and the password hash of the account is restored from the backup.

As of macOS 10.14.4, once the reference to the password hash is removed from the AuthenticationAuthority attribute, the actual password hash is now automatically deleted by the OS. That means that step 2 in the process described above actually causes the password for the account to be removed, so that the account’s password must be re-set.

How to fix this? For more details, please see below the jump.