Merry Christmas! Ho, Ho, Ho, it’s about time for the big guy. Best wishes for a very Blessed Holiday and a wonderful new year, may it be our best.
I also wanted to let the Mac users in the group know they should keep their machines running so Apple can do an automatic update, the very FIRST they have ever done since introducing the technology a few years ago. This means they will do the update WITHOUT you having to do anything, no approval required and no restart. A flaw was discovered that affects EVERY computer, including industrial control systems. What the other guys will do about this for their users I haven’t a clue but it was discovered Friday and Apple forced the update Monday so if your Mac was running you are O.K., Apple also says they know of no breaches. Our world is amazing in this 21st Century but it’s also quite fragile to so many areas of breach. Staying informed is a responsibility we each can’t ignore. So, if you have gotten the update you can now sit back and look for the fella in the Red Coat paying you a visit. Be safe! John Critical flaw forces Apple to push Mac update for first time <http://gigaom.com/> By David Meyer Apple has pushed an automatic update to Macs for the first time, in order to fix a critical vulnerability in the network time protocol (NTP), which is used to synchronize computers’ clocks. The company typically uses its software update mechanism to issue security updates, with users consciously being involved in the process, but this one was extraordinarily urgent, and led Apple to use an automatic update mechanism that it developed a couple years back but had not used until Monday. Apple spokesman Bill Evans told Reuters <http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/23/us-apple-cybersecurity-idUSKBN0K108W20141223> that the firm wanted to protect customers as quickly as possible – and indeed, when it was first released on Monday ahead of the automated push, the update was unusually entitled <http://www.macrumors.com/2014/12/22/apple-issues-new-security-fix/>: “Install this update as soon as possible.” The flaw was flagged up <https://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/advisories/ICSA-14-353-01> by the U.S. government on Friday – it doesn’t just affect Macs, but also systems all the way up to industrial control systems, and the government needed to warn those running critical infrastructure. According to that warning: Evans told Reuters that Apple was not aware of any exploitations of the flaw in Macs. The update <https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6601>, which doesn’t require a restart, was released for OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5, OS X Mavericks v10.9.5, and OS X Yosemite v10.10.1.
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