Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Unwanted Guests
« Read Logicomix | Main | Do The Right Thing »Users who have upgraded to Apple's recently released 10.6 update to OS X, codenamed Snow Leopard, have reported a seemingly rare bug that results in their entire user account, including settings and data, being lost inadvertently. The bug apparently rears its head when a user logs in, either intentionally or unintentionally, to the 'guest' account on their machine. When the user logs out and logs back into their regular user account they receive the nasty surprise that it has been fully reset to the default state for a new account and their data has been lost.
If this bug turns out to be as easy to trigger as it sounds, then the security implications are pretty serious since they effectively translate a short window of physical access to a machine into the ability to do irreparable damage in fairly subtle way. Although reports of the bug appear to have surfaced within days of Snow Leopard's release, Apple has only just now acknowledged the problem.
Until Apple addresses this problem properly, a good first-step defense is to disable the 'guest' account.
CNET has posted tips for avoiding the bug and recovering data if you've fallen prey to it already.
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