Suspicious network activity by Parallels

W

Wary

Bit poster
I have Parallels installed on a new Mac - OS X 10.4.7. I also have "Little Snitch" installed to tell me when anything running on the Macx is trying to phone home through the Internet.

Twice now, both times on a Saturday morning (coincidence ?), when I start up Parallels, but not yet started the VM, I get a warning from Little Snitch that "Parallels wants to connect to unknown248.96.65.69.defenderhosting.com on TCP port 80 (http)".

I have a screenshot attached here.

What is Parallels trying to do ? I have denied it access both times.

The defenderhostiing.com company seems to be a business that creates virtual servers for other companies' web sites. Perhaps Parallels has their website hosted there ? I have noticed that the forum software that each company uses is the same. But if that company is hosting Parallels' site, why is Parallels phoning home ? If they are not phoning home, who are they phoning ?
 

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if youre that worried, get an ethereal trace... but I suspect that someone has simply put a version check into the software and thats what its looking for.
 
Ethereal is probably overkill for this one...

Deny the request. If something breaks, you know which application is doing it.

If you reboot and get the same promt, go into your windows VM and use netstat to see which windows process is attempting to make the connection.
 
If you look under the Help menu there's a "Check for updates" option. Select that and you'll see that there is a checkbox for "Check for update automatically". On my system this defaults to ON, and "Perform check every 7 days". I would guess your installation is the same.
 
AlanH said:
If you look under the Help menu there's a "Check for updates" option. Select that and you'll see that there is a checkbox for "Check for update automatically". On my system this defaults to ON, and "Perform check every 7 days". I would guess your installation is the same.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the answer. I thought it might be that, but didn't find anything about auto update in the preferences. Sticking it in the help menu seems dumb to me when there is a Preferences in the Parallels Desktop menu.

Thanks!
 
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