Zero-Day Flaw on Mac OS X Affects All Versions of Yosemite

Another flaw in OS X was released recently by an 18-year old Italian who says he does security research when he has spare time. In this case, it affects OS X versions 10.9.5 through 10.10.5 (Yosemite).

This particular issue causes a memory corruption in the OS X kernel and may give a hacker root access to the machine. It does not seem to be present on the next release of the operating system, version 10.11 El Capitan, which is currently in beta and due out this fall.

Another vulnerability affecting local privilege escalations (DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE) was patched recently that may have allowed installation of undesirable or unwanted programs onto the computers without a password. The update is available in the Mac App store. It also addresses compatibility issues with some mail servers as well as a Photos bug.

If you have a Mac running on any of the Yosemite versions of OS X, stop in at the App Store and get the patch that was released. As soon as the latest one is fixed, apply that patch too. It is important to get critical and security patches installed as soon as possible after they are released. With zero-day flaws, the attackers know of the issue before the vendor has the chance to address them. This means it may be exploited immediately, but in this case no cases have been identified or reported at time of writing.

Also make sure anti-malware software is installed and kept updated. If malware is installed as a result of a zero-day exploit, anti-malware products can help detect it.

Apple was notified of this newest vulnerability just a few hours before the discoverer released it on Github. He claimed he does not have issues with Apples patch policy, but no explanation as to why he publicly released it without giving Apple sufficient time to respond was given.