[TheNewsIsHere]

It is a security nightmare by today’s standards, and was hard to secure back then as well.

Apple devices provide a good exemplar because of their significant investments in security, but it’s not the only company making devices about which you can say physical control is no longer an absolute proxy for logical control.

Take for instance an Apple silicon Mac (or for that matter an iPhone). Generally speaking you could steal it from someone but without the credentials it’s more or less a brick.

Apple silicon Macs in particular have firmware that requires certain base actions to be authorized with the password of the “Owner” account, which is (typically) the first user account created on the machine. Without that, it will just stare back at you.

Are there vulnerabilities that could enable a bypass? Probably. Are those in the hands of any given evil maid or thief? Exceedingly unlikely.