macOS High Sierra Bug Lets Anyone Gain Root Access

 
Hi guys hope you are all keeping well, and if not I am yet again going to drain the brightness from your day. If you own a Mac computer and run the latest version of Apple's operating system, macOS High Sierra, then you need to be extra careful with your computer. Apparently anyone and I mean anyone from your two year old to your grandad can break into your mac device and become a superuser. Yes I said it, a superuser a god of elevated privileges a root to all evil, only the geeks in the room will get that one. So here's the thing Apple are calling this a bug when they should really just come out and say:

 "look guys we turned on root to do some shit, then we kinda forgot to turn it off, and, em, looks like that's the image we used to roll out 1,000s of machines on, our bad.....
PS the iPhone X is great you should go buy one it comes with enhanced features like stealing your key biometrics data for facial recognition so the CIA don't have to." - This may or may not have been a statement made by Apple T&C's apply.

Here's How to Login as Root User Without a Password

If you own a Mac and want to try this exploit, follow these steps from admin or guest account:

• Open System Preferences on the machine.
• Select Users & Groups.
• Click the lock icon to make changes.
• Enter "root" in the username field of a login window.
• Move the cursor into the Password field and hit enter button there few times, leaving it blank.

With that macOS High Sierra logs the unauthorized user in with root privileges, allowing the user to access your Mac as a "superuser" with permission to read and write to system files, including those in other macOS accounts as well.

This flaw can be exploited in several ways, depending on the setup of the targeted Mac. With full-disk encryption disabled, a rogue user can turn on a Mac that's entirely powered down and log in as root by doing the same trick.

At Mac's login screen, an untrusted user can also use the root trick to gain access to a Mac that has FileVault turned on to make unauthorized changes to the Mac System Preferences, like disabling FileVault.

All the untrusted user needs to do is click "Other" at the login screen, and then enter "root" again with no password. However, it is impossible to exploit this vulnerability when a Mac machine is turned on, and the screen is protected with a password.

I suppose there is no point in doing the scary dance without having a solution to hand and just as easy the potential to carry out this exploit the fix is similarly as simple to fix just follow the steps below.

Here's How to Temporarily Fix the macOS High Sierra Bug

To fix the vulnerability, you need to enable the root user with a password. Heres how to do that:

• Open System Preferences and Select Users & Groups
• Click on the lock icon and Enter your administrator name and password there
• Click on "Login Options" and select "Join" at the bottom of the screen
• Select "Open Directory Utility"
• Click on the lock icon to make changes and type your username and password there
• Click "Edit" at the top of the menu bar
• Select "Enable Root User" and set a password for the root user account

This password will prevent the account from being accessed with a blank password.

Just to be on the safer side, you can also disable Guest accounts on your Mac. for this, head on to System Preferences → Users & Groups, select Guest User after entering your admin password, and disable "Allow guests to log in to this computer."

Are your keystrokes being recorded?

It's always nice to set the scene for these subjects it helps my over active imagination to write better, so lets sit back and imagine the following: you are browsing the internet, firstly you look up a few weird and wonderful subjects, then you tip over to that dodgy website your wife doesn't know about to catch up on that online affair you have been having. You ask how did you know? well if you have been watching any tech related news in the past week you would have seen a headline or two stating things like "popular sites record your every keystrokes" and the rest.

So you ask what does that mean, websites are recording my keystrokes so they have a bulk file filled with code and text and links right?  Well technically yes but someone also though it would be a good idea to create a software that plays back all of this stuff in a film like format, sound scary? well it is and as you can see from the video below were your "keystrokes" to get leaked you might be in a whole pile of doo doo pretty quickly.

Researchers from Princeton University's Centre for Information Technology Policy (CITP) analyzed the Alexa top 50,000 websites in the world and found that 482 sites, many of which are high profile, are using a new web-tracking technique to track every move of their users.

Dubbed "Session Replay," the technique is used even by most popular websites, including The Guardian, Reuters, Samsung, Al-Jazeera, VK, Adobe, Microsoft, and WordPress, to record every single movement a visitor does while navigating a web page, and this incredibly extensive data is then sent off to a third party for analysis.

"Session replay scripts" are usually designed to gather data regarding user engagement that can be used by website developers to improve the end-user experience. However, what's particularly concerning is that these scripts record beyond the information you purposely give to a website—which also includes the text you type out while filing a form and then delete before hitting 'Submit.'

If your starting to get cold sweats after reading the above then here are a couple of sites where you can educate yourself a bit further on this topic.

https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/website-keylogging.html

https://thenextweb.com/security/2017/11/21/hundreds-of-websites-record-your-every-keystroke-without-you-knowing/

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/websites-record-keystroke/

Smart Devices Stupid People Syndrome

 

In the last few months I have reduced my use of smart device's and technology in general, in a way I have unplugged to a certain extent, yes I still read the news on my smart phone and carry out the odd Google search, I would call my current interactions with technology as selective. I have varying reasons for this, their is no denying that technology has enhanced modern lives in ways that could never have been imagined. My worries However, run deeper my concern is there's a basic human cost to these great enhancements in technology, I refer to this as "smart devices stupid people syndrome". I do admit its not a very medical term but its the best way to put across a point that individuals are unknowingly eroding there right to privacy and becoming more an more unsocial.

My simple test for this is the next time your out and about the location is unimportant be it the pub, restaurant, train station etc. I want you to do the following, turn off your music, smart watch, phone and any other device that may interrupt this test, find a good visual location and just observe the people around you. Now here is the fun part I want you to count how many people are lost in a device and are oblivious to there current surrounding they are just going through the motions of there day without taking in the world around them.

The ironic thing is that while the individual may not be taking in there surroundings there devices are, they are logging their location, analyzing there search history, identifying trends from social media apps. We now live in a world of big data its the new age where data is power and we are all giving it away so freely. When is the last time you downloaded an application and read the user license agreement (ULA)? For the majority of people the answer is probably never, we blindly agree to thousands of lines of legal agreements so we can use a free app that delivers some innocuous service  that we saw in an add or on social media and decided we couldn't live without, the caveat is nothing in this world is free you are paying with information a level of which has now reached an unprecedented level.

The reaction I normally get when I ask people why they send everything they are doing on Snapchat or why they post their every movement on Facebook, Twitter etc. is normally the candid "sure who cares about me". To which I normally say depends on what you define as "care", if your going away for a weeks holiday post your "check in " online and then track your memories through out your trip, well then robbers care very much that you are not at home and they can get in and out of your home whilst you keep them updated with the latest beach side selfie.

What if an app starts selling your location history enriched with your user details to your insurance company or health provider so they see you read your texts while driving oh and you rarely stay under the speed limit and your most frequented location is the local pub I think they will go out of there way to up your quote or not insure you at all, does that fall under the category of "who cares about you"?

How about a future employer that runs your name through a HR software to find all the inappropriate images and posts and tweets you have built up over the years , like it or not what happens online stays online, forever.  So to answer the above question you should care, because data does not lie so beware because its only a matter of time before you too can catch "smart device stupid people syndrome" you will find its rapidly becoming an epidemic.