RIXSTEP'S KEYMASTER DEFEATS APPLE'S GATEKEEPER

For immediate release. For Apple's macOS Catalina. For free distribution.

Get It Try It

CIRENCESTER (Rixstep) — Blighty-based Rixstep today announce KEYMASTER SOLO, a free utility for Apple's macOS Catalina.

Apple's metadata mania is getting out of hand. Downloading anything from the web, whether or not it be through Apple's default web browser Safari, can result in as many as a half dozen or more 'extended attributes' stuck to the download.

If the download is zipped, then unzipping will result in each and every item inheriting the same extended attributes.

Ordinary non-technical macOS users have no way of detecting these extended attributes with their file manager Finder, and no way to remove them - something that leads to insurmountable and complex issues.

Rixstep's KEYMASTER SOLO counters that - it's a free download available now.

HOW KEYMASTER SOLO WORKS

1. Fire it up.
2. Choose which of your home directories you want KEYMASTER SOLO to guard for you.
3. Click 'Go'.

That's it!

Things can follow Murphy's Law in complex systems. Should KEYMASTER SOLO not get its events in time, there's no need to panic: just make KEYMASTER SOLO your active application again (click on its title bar, then dismiss its window as before). That should do it.

WHAT KEYMASTER SOLO DOES

KEYMASTER SOLO taps into the events daemon running Spotlight. It specifically looks for changes in the directories you select, and responds by cleaning recursively.

All extended attributes are cleansed from all files and directories it encounters. The files and directories are thereafter masked so they're read-only, so that further mischief can't befall them.

KEYMASTER SOLO is very fast and thorough, but it still can pay to not keep extensive hierarchies of files in the directories you select for KEYMASTER SOLO. With hundreds of thousands of files you might experience a temporary 'sluggishness'. But there's no point in even having that. Just keep your target directories sparsely populated.

KEYMASTER SOLO swoops down in two separate 'attacks', and may in the future augment this.

The first 'attack' happens immediately, with no so-called 'latency', and the other happens after approximately ten seconds. Bottlenecks in the daemon can cause these timings to be off by a few fractions of a second.

COMPATIBILITY

KEYMASTER SOLO is compatible with macOS Catalina, and can also run on macOS Mojave.

DOWNLOAD

Download KEYMASTER SOLO here. The download is ~53 KB.

KEYMASTER SOLO IS FREEWARE

KEYMASTER SOLO is freeware, but you're encouraged to look at our two commercial products, the ACP and the Xfile System.

Note that a purchase of either product includes free updates to that product for one year.

Note as well that, as both products are collections of software titles rather than a single application, both products will normally include new applications within that year. Those applications are also free.

About Rixstep

Stockholm/London-based Rixstep are a constellation of programmers and support staff from Radsoft Laboratories who tired of Windows vulnerabilities, Linux driver issues, and cursing x86 hardware all day long. Rixstep have many years of experience behind their efforts, with teaching and consulting credentials from the likes of British Aerospace, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Lloyds TSB, SAAB Defence Systems, British Broadcasting Corporation, Barclays Bank, IBM, Microsoft, and Sony/Ericsson.

Rixstep and Radsoft products are or have been in use by Sweden's Royal Mail, Sony/Ericsson, the US Department of Defense, the offices of the US Supreme Court, the Government of Western Australia, the German Federal Police, Verizon Wireless, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Microsoft Corporation, the New York Times, Apple Inc, Oxford University, and hundreds of research institutes around the globe. See here.

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