Apple takes pride in their products not being easily penetrable, however early this December a major flaw was discovered in the latest Mac OS update. Macs are Unix based operating systems which by default contain a superuser “root”, who has the highest level of clearance. The bug made users who installed High Sierra, vulnerable to anyone with physical access to their computer. Once having gained access, they simply need to type in “root” as the username, leave the password blank, and just like that they can browse your entire database. They can then, easily set a password for “root” and use those credentials to continue logging into your system.
This flaw in the system went public within minutes of its discovery. Users took to social media to record themselves breaking into their own computers. It took Apple a total of 18 hours to release a patch. By then, the vulnerability had reached a huge audience and experts weighed in on the issue. Cybersecurity engineers suggested an easy fix to the issue, simply set a password for root. In response, Apple stated that they will expand their testing in an attempt to prevent any future vulnerabilities.
