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If I could, I would kick the guys responsible¹ for the disclosure in the ass. Why? We now have a youtube video with shitty music (proving essentially nothing), some scaremonger articles with a lot of prose around very few interesting bits, and most importantly, a friggin' hashtag. And of course, a name for the vuln. But nothing, absolutely nothing, on how to protect myself as an ordinary user. The only thing I was able to infer from the craptastic video is that the user they're escalating from is member of the "admin" group, i.e. not a "Standard User" but an "Admin" in OS X lingo. Among other things, the most obvious difference to regular Accounts is that "Admin" users can use sudo by default, but no clue whatsoever is exploited here. Some pipe-fu with sudo? Or a stupid setting by apple allowing "admin" group members doing dangerous things without (re-)authentication? In closing, best make sure you're using OS X as a "Standard" User, not "Admin". In my experience, it's quite painless. Edit:
> "Normally there are 'sudo' password requirements, which work as a barrier, so the admin can't gain root access without entering the correct password. However, rootpipe circumvents this," he says. This at least hints at the possibility that said exploit does not work from a standard user. So there's that... ¹most likely not the researchers themselves, but some "CEO" or other suit-level. |
"[...] nothing, absolutely nothing, on how to protect myself as an ordinary user." Really? He gave you two tips, didn't he? Make sure your default account doesn't have admin rights and use FileVault. He obviously can't tell us why FileVault helps without risking our safety. That's clearly not nothing.