Did you just recently upgrade to Mac OS 10.6.5 or 10.6.6+ and have your firewall report that “awacsd” is accepting inbound connections?
Apple has added a new component into Mac OS X, called awacsd. This component is called “Apple Wide Area Connectivity Service daemon”, or awacsd… This daemon is used to assist in making connections between devices for users that are using Back to My Mac, at least according to the Unix man page documentation.
I finally got a Senior Advisor, Taylor, at Apple to answer this. Three previous technicians claimed they’d never heard of this issue.
APACSD is Apple Wide Area Connectivity Service Daemon. It is a function of MobileMe. It doesn’t pertain to BTMM only, but to a world of connections such as Calendar, Contacts, Synch, iWeb, etc.
Taylor explained that this a a form of handshaking between MobileMe and your Mac. If the connection is disabled by your firewall protection, you will see many malfunctions in anything MobileMe-related.
hello.connectivity.me.com is a platform established in OSX 10.6.6 that will later support other added services.
Is this a security risk? I believe not, at this time, I see no reason to believe this is a concern as long as you ensure that your Apple ID, has a secure password. Now there are a few reports that the daemon will handshake with the remote server even if Back to the Mac is turned off, that could be due to a bug, or just part of the normal startup process for the daemon.
If you have any additional information or questions, please feel free to leave it in the comments…