A White-hat Hacker Discovered A Dangerous Vulnerability In Three Apple Operating Systems
The vulnerability, called "Rootpipe," appears to have been discovered by Emil Kvarnhammar, a consultant at IT security firm TrueSec.
Rootpipe allows outside users to gain administrator-level access to Macs running OS X Yosemite, Mavericks, or Mountain Lion without a password.
The security flaw gives attackers the opportunity to steal information, install malicious programs, or erase users' hard drives.
Kvarnhammar, for his part, appears to be waiting for Apple to patch Rootpipe before saying much about it:
Rootpipe has probably been around since at least 2012, according to Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet.
Apple has not publically acknowledged the security flaw and is expected to patch it in mid-January 2015, reports ZDNet.
We've reached out to Apple for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
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