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Fri, Mar 17, 2006

Network Access is a Security Risk

After I applied Apples' latest Security Update 2006-002 everything went smooth - until this morning. My iMac crashed with a kernel panic before the login screen appeared, so I rebooted my machine and was able to login again. But now the date/time display in the upper right corner of the screen had disappeared, as had all the System's icons in the menu bar (AirPort etc.). Only the application icons (like my RSS reader) were still there. And - worst of all - I had no network access any more.

So I went to the System Preferences to enable the System's menu icons and to set up network access again. But the settings were either disabled (greyed out) or checking the boxes had no effect - they were unchecked again each time you opened the preference pane. Others have the same problem with this security update.

Fixing this was easy, at least for me: After I repaired permissions (once again...) all the icons suddenly reappeared, and the System Preferences were usable again. But, Apple, why did this happen at all? A user-friendly Unix-based operating system in its fifth generation should not have problems with file permissions any more.

[Update] Apple has released version 1.1 of the Security Update 2006-002, so maybe these problems are fixed by now. Any volunteers?

Posted by Thomas Much at 10:21
Categories: Apple & Mac OS X