No sooner have you downloaded and got used to LockRattler 4.0 than the next version is in beta.

Thank Philip Noguchi (who kindly commented on a previous article here) for this – as it was he who wanted LockRattler to show information about the latest installed updates. With that as a challenge, this beta release now adds:

• Checks and reports the date, time, and version of the latest installed updates to XProtect, Gatekeeper, the KEXT blocker, and MRT.
• Checks and reports the date, time, and version of the latest installed system software update, and security update.
• Checks with Apple’s servers for any available updates, downloads and installs them when possible.

In fairness to Philip, he only asked for the first of these; I thought that, whilst I was about it, I’d add the others for good measure.

This should make LockRattler the only tool that you need to check and maintain the security protection built into macOS.

I have not tested this version on El Capitan, but it appears to work fully on Sierra and High Sierra. Obtaining the information on installed updates is dependent on parsing a large property list file, and not all its entries are as properly-named as they should be. The KEXT block version, for example, doesn’t always match that installed, as Apple seems to have supplied most updates to it within system updates, rather than separately.

Checking and installing updates doesn’t routinely prompt you to authenticate, but should do so if it needs to.

This first beta-release is available here: lockrattler411
and in Downloads above.

Again, I particularly welcome reports from its use, successful or not, and most particularly on El Capitan, please.