After being made aware of a rather embarrassing security bug in the macOS operating system, Apple have responded with a fix and apology in less than 24 hours.
The bug allowed anyone to login to a Mac running High Sierra version 10.13.1 (17B48) by simply typing “root” in the username field, leaving the password blank and hitting enter a few times. Strewth.
As you’d expect, Apple are urging everyone to install the patch as quickly as possible because, you know, they don’t want sneaky buggers getting into anyone’s computer and all that. As well as rolling it via the normal update channels, they’ve also setup a support page where you can grab Security Update 2017–001.
The company also issued an apology, which is nice to see when such a monumental fuckup slips through the corporate cracks. “Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS,” the statement reads.
“We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again.”
Look, we’ll forgive you, but only because of the incredibly speedy turnaround on this fix. There must have been a lot of stressed out engineers working pretty fast on this one.
It goes without saying, but if you haven’t already, install the patch now. It only takes a few minutes and doesn’t appear to require a restart.
