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Securing your Mac - OSX Sierra - Stop root access & how to change root password

Updated: Feb 2, 2018

So there's a lot of tweets flying around on securing your OSX. The best and most simple way is to apply the patch when it's available. But as with the KRACK issue (read here) Apple were kind of slow to update new hardware and didn't appear to worry about patching old hardware as far as I can tell it's an iOS 11.x update only.


This means old hardware could be subjected to #KRACK :)


So to take matters into your own hands simply launch Terminal.app via spotlight and run:


Press the following keys:

cmd⌘ + Spacebar

Launch terminal by typing:

terminal.app

In the terminal window type

sudo passwd root

Then you will be prompted to type in your new password:




This allows you to type a new secure password for your root account and thus stopping this vector in it tracks. Just follow the prompts.


Hopefully that's helped a few of you.


If so comment down below give your opinions on this, and why oh why has Apple allowed this simple yet very open vector to be out there in the wild!


If government agencies had trouble accessing your hardware before I guess they weren't looking hard enough, with something like this that can be easily exploited.


UPDATE:

So apple did indeed release a patch just after I posted this little blog. This in turn broke file sharing option on some systems. They have released a terminal command to fix this new issue.

So if you want to fix it follow the steps found here:

  1. Launch terminal again as the above steps.

  2. Run the command & enter your admin password:

sudo /usr/libexec/configureLocalKDC

That's it, hopefully should fix anymore issues., we hope...


Apple's article can be found here


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