The OS X Yosimite 10.10.3 update aimed to provide improved stability and address various compatibility and security issues experienced by OS X users, was recently made available for download by Apple.
Tha California-based tech giant made the update available here, and stated that has improvements for Emojis (they can now have a different skin tone), Spotlight, Safari, and WiFi connectivity, among various others.
OS X Yosimite Recovery Update 1.0 is also available and should help achieve and maintain reliable back-ups of the OS.
The app Photos for OS X, meant to be a replacement for iPhoto, is featured in this new update. Although it is said to be an improved version, professional users might find it a bit lacking for their needs.
Support for the Google 2-Step Verification has also been improved and can be set up in System Preferences.
OS X 10.10.3 was first made available to developers in February, and then to public beta testers the following month.
Meanwhile, the security improvement in this new update was given credence by a professional hacker.
Reports indicate that Swedish hacker Emil Kvarnhammar said a backdoor apparently grants root access to local users on unpatched Macs.
"The admin framework in Apple OS X contains a hidden backdoor API to root privileges [that] can be exploited to escalate privileges to root from any user account in the system," Kvarnhammar said.
"The intention was probably to serve the System Preferences app and system setup command-line tool, but any user process can use the same functionality. This is a local privilege escalation to root, which can be used locally or combined with remote code execution exploits," he added.
It appears that this security vulnerability has been addressed only on OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite, so this development will encourage Mac users to upgrade to the latest version to avoid attacks.
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