Doug Lhotka

Technical Storyteller

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Doug Lhotka.
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We are Root – Major MacOS Security Flaw

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I don’t normally do ‘breaking news’ but this one’s pretty big.  There’s a login flaw in MacOS High Sierra that allows anyone with physical access to a running machine to gain root privileges – we are all root (apologies to the guardians of the galaxy).  Details here: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/28/macos-high-sierra-bug-admin-access/

The workaround in the story, and from Apple is to set a root password.  Historically that has caused other problems, so beware.  An alternative appears to be to power off the machine (cold boot – not just suspend or hibernate) when leaving it unattended.

It’s a nice find by the researcher.  I doubt we’ll find out the root (pun intended) cause, but it’d be fascinating to know how this happened.   It reminds me when I managed to unlock my Grandfather’s new Lincoln by simply pushing all the buttons on the door keypad in order twice.  Not a use case that’d show up in testing, but a typical 10-year-old boy could find in 2 minutes.

This is something similar.  It looks like it’s a result of several well-intentioned attempts to hide security complexity from the user:  architecture choices (use a UNIX core), design choices (hide root from the user), security choices (don’t set a root password), and a new change in high Sierra, all chained together that cause a major security vulnerability.  The stuff of nightmares.

Denali on a ‘clear’ day

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Visiting Denali national park is always spectacular, and no matter the weather, there’s always good shooting.  If it’s rainy or overcast the critters come out, and if the sun’s shining, you might be one of the 30% of visitors who get to see the peak itself.  This was on our last day of the trip, leaving the park.  Not a bad sendoff at all.

Friday Photo – Flying Sea Lion in the Great Southern Ocean

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When we were in Tasmania, we took a photo cruise down into the great southern ocean.  The scenery was spectacular (I’ll share those another time), and there was tons of wildlife.  On an island off the south tip there was a huge colony of sea lions basking on the rocks.  Somehow this one had climbed, jumped, flown? about 20 feet up the side of a near-cliff.   So this must be the very rare Great Southern Flying Sea Lion.