On Monday night, Variety reported that film editors around Los Angeles who had Avid Media Composer software installed were suddenly finding that their Macs were unable to reboot. The publication speculated that malware may have been the cause. On Wednesday, Google disclosed the real cause—a Chrome browser update.
Specifically, it was a new version of Chrome's Keystone updater that caused so many Macs to stop rebooting, according to this Chrome open bug post. When the update was installed on Macs that had disabled a security feature known as system integrity protection and met several other conditions, a crucial part of the Mac system file was damaged, a Google employee said in the forum.
"This appears to be an issue with a new version of Google Keystone," a different Google employee wrote earlier in the thread. "We have halted the rollout and are working on remediation right now."
[...] Google has instructions for restoring unbootable Macs here. The process involves booting into recovery mode and then opening a terminal window, which among other ways can be accessed from the utilities folder. From there, run the following commands:
chroot /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD # "Macintosh HD" is the default
rm -rf /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle
mv var var_back # var may not exist, but this is fine
ln -sh private/var var
chflags -h restricted /var
chflags -h hidden /var
xattr -sw com.apple.rootless "" /varThen reboot.
If everything goes right, the Mac will restart with the buggy Chrome update no longer installed and with the damaged file system repaired. It wasn't immediately clear when a fixed version of the Chrome update will be available.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 27 2019, @02:10AM (11 children)
They're easy, user-friendly, immune to viruses and bugs, and you never, ever have to open a ter--well, pizdec.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @02:14AM (5 children)
Nah the Mac viruses are unknown because NSA uses them to selectively target rich and influential Apple users.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 27 2019, @02:19AM
NSA prefers Macs. But don't forget they're infested with CIA Google fags, socialist Chinese fifth-columnist scum, and other fifth-columnists whose mission is purely to destroy the great nation of the United States of America!
Fuck off, you bastards. We're going to put you up on meathooks!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday September 27 2019, @02:43AM (3 children)
rich and influential Apple users
You mean there's another kind??
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 27 2019, @02:46AM
We will take them out. That will make America Great Again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @04:32AM (1 child)
Sure there is, There's the rich and uninflunential apple users (Apparently the majority of Apple users), and the rich and clueless Apple users, not to mention the totally stupid Apple users.
(Score: 3, Touché) by stretch611 on Friday September 27 2019, @06:45AM
The "totally stupid apple users" that used to be "the rich and clueless", until having to pay for apple products.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Friday September 27 2019, @11:23AM (3 children)
This bug only affected advanced users who had already booted into recovery mode, opened a terminal and typed a specific command to specifically disable a security feature designed to stop just this sort of thing, because they needed to do other non-user-friendly, Unix-y things.
There's plenty of other stuff to whale on Apple for, but this one is squarely between Google and those users who knowingly took the calculated risk of disabling SIP.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday September 27 2019, @12:48PM
Yeah, but it was actually funny, until you spoiled the joke with detailed explanation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
In other words, the people who's using cracked software.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday September 27 2019, @02:44PM
Its not a 'crack' - its an 'official' macOS command 'csrutil' (it even has a manpage) - deliberately included in MacOS to allow "power users" to disable a security feature that otherwise prevents even privileged users/processes from modifying certain system files. There's just no big friendly point-and-drool luser-mode checkbox.
Currently, MacOS - unlike iOS - still comes with the keys to the walled garden.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @12:17PM
Another factually wrong and ignorant comment from our ever present troll.
It's the only kind of posts she ever makes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @02:19AM
You must pick your faction allegiance, for both MPAA and CIA backdoors cannot be installed concurrently. Or buy another Mac or two, if you really need both.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday September 27 2019, @02:29AM (2 children)
What the heck is Chrome doing to system files? I get that people had to override some defaults, but so what? Any program that goes after system files should be suspect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @02:01PM
Chrome held the file system wrong.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday September 27 2019, @05:03PM
what the heck is 'google' doing to system files? ftfy
answer: reading them and sharing them with people who think they are your rulers, so that they can take over your country and rule it from afar
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @02:33AM
everything
That'll fix it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @02:37AM (1 child)
> No, It Wasn’t A Virus; It Was Chrome That Stopped Macs From Booting
No, it wasn't the airplanes, it was beauty that killed the beast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMNICLfHE3M&t=144 [youtube.com]
And, the best movie-to-rock'n-roll segue ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2tr-UctURQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @04:34AM
It wasn't a virus...it was a feature.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday September 27 2019, @02:40AM (10 children)
It is a weakness in the OS. It shouldn't be on a writable medium.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 27 2019, @03:02AM (3 children)
If the OS is not on a writeable medium, then how do you install updates (in particular, security fixes)?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @03:13AM (1 child)
Old idea -- one OS "forever", in ROM. Pound on it enough before burning the ROM and it won't have security holes.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday September 27 2019, @11:04PM
Kinda like the 27C256 we used to have eh?
I would sure like to keep my master copy of OS on a modern flash drive chip...with it's write disabled.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @04:41AM
Great idea. You should patent it.
(Score: 2) by mth on Friday September 27 2019, @03:55AM (5 children)
The "System Integrity Protection" is a mechanism to reject writes to certain system areas, even to root, except by processes with dedicated privileges. This mechanism is turned on by default, but the affected people had turned it off. Which, according to the WIkipedia page, is a far from trivial process, so they must have done so deliberately. Maybe Avid Media Composer doesn't play well with it, but that's just a guess based on the reporting that users of that particular piece of software were affected.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Friday September 27 2019, @03:59AM (3 children)
except by processes with dedicated privileges.
There should be no such thing. Load that stuff in another space.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by mth on Friday September 27 2019, @05:04AM (2 children)
If your only concern is security, I agree. But as a user, I do like not having to reboot on every system upgrade.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday September 27 2019, @05:18AM (1 child)
I also question the quality of a system that needs so many upgrades so often. A system on ROM is invulnerable and can always boot clean when something breaks. All your drivers and whatnot stay outside the fence. Most of them should be on their own ROM also, ready to run when power is applied, not three minutes later like an old vacuum tube television.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by mth on Friday September 27 2019, @05:51AM
Code hasn't been running directly from ROM for a long time. I have an 80's computer which copies the ROM into write-protected RAM on startup so it can read it faster.
With modern flash ROMs, you can't even execute directly from them: you have to retrieve a whole page and then error-correct it before you can use the data.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @05:12AM
AVC injects a module into the kernel in order to hide their DRM dongle from most processes. It is basically an anti-circumvention measure, but in order to work, their installer turns off SIP.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday September 27 2019, @03:38AM (1 child)
None of it should have escalated rights allowing it to render the system unbootable. Personally, I would not install a mere browser that requires elevated rights if I was a Mac user.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @04:33AM
It's a user application that likes to moonlight as an OS: Chrome OS.
(Score: 2) by helel on Friday September 27 2019, @03:59AM (1 child)
It's worth noting that system integrity protection is on by default and there is no way to turn it off through the GUI. No causal user is suffering this problem right now and anyone who knows what they're doing will turn it back on if they ever need to turn it off. While the bulk of the blame has to go to google here the only people being burnt are those that know just enough about the command line to get themselves into trouble.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @07:09AM
Except it is Google how got them in trouble here, no matter how you look at it.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday September 27 2019, @06:38AM
Oh, no!!! command line!!!
What Mac user is going to know how to type commands without going into conniptions? :D
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @12:32PM (9 children)
Why are working editors installing updates? According to best practice, any mission critical workstation is only updated between projects.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Friday September 27 2019, @02:59PM
That was before the era of (a) so-called 'released' software being in perpetual beta with a stream of 'critical' security updates, (b) pervasive auto-update-by-default that you have to jump through hoops to disable and (c) all of your documentation, and probably some of your applications, being online, meaning that your 'mission critical' machines need a constantly updated web browser.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday September 27 2019, @04:48PM (7 children)
Because the death of the personal computer and the corruption of megacorporations who are establishing a global system of top down control, where every computer needs to be able to get custom updates pushed to it or turned into a listening device at the push of a button.
Which is bad to the extent you are not a cow.
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday September 28 2019, @02:06AM (6 children)
They call you crazy, and maybe you are, but the world is so insane than your particular brand of maybe-crazy makes a hell of a lot more sense than what passes for sanity these days.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday September 28 2019, @09:22AM (5 children)
(i keep hitting the wrong reply button, they are tooooo closely placed together so i posted this as separate comment first, apologies)
There was a time even I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I was uncertain about a path forward, or thought I had nothing to contribute. I am still astounded that so many suit wearing flag worshipping americans are selling out our country to crass plutarchs and foreign countries, I always kindof thought they would have *some* kind of backbone. The soldiers and officers and police I have met sure don't seem like such cucks, but here we are getting epsteined. And then on top of that so many people who chose to be police officers and military officers are gaslighting the hell out of the civilian population while epstein flies around with Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak.
I used to wonder but those days are past, too many things I predicted have come true and now I know what we can do. Some paths forward are on my website, and a lot of that is links to the work of other people smarter than myself. I am just getting started.
Call me crazy, call me wrong, I will argue/discuss with you as long as I am drawing breath and you are polite, but I am a single human being and I am neither a robot or a shill. And if I toot my own horn for a second, I am one of the best and most prolific writers in the history of the english language. That's what I think people really hate when they say I'm crazy, I write how they wish they could. Freely.
Crazy is when you keep doing the same thing over and over without success. I have tried so many things, but I haven't tried what I am doing now.
The truth is crazy, people are destroying their own planet for fantasy $'s in computers which have no tangency to reality, there are no longer enough goods and services in the world for all of those 000,000's. I have no allegiance or buy in to this system, I have only survived by maintaining my own mental space independent of it, as I suspect have many.
Try not watching CNN for a year then have a conversation with someone who does, they will call you crazy too. I stopped watching tv news completely so long ago I can't remember, the concept is abhorrent to me, it's clearly one of the major roots of all of the problems, the ease with which people are shortcircuited with graphics and flashing lights to believe literally anything, like that there is proof epstein is dead.
I have been preparing for this world, the predictions I did not want to come true came true despite my best efforts, so it should be no wonder to people who have been more gullible I appear wildly incongruous or 'crazy'(to people with a limited vocabulary and a penchant for unqualified armchair diagnosis over distance)
Thank you for the kind words, made my day. But I am also not joking that I could use a hand, if I cannot earn money by writing and speaking my viewpoint, or share my story with a journalist who understands the gravity of what I am saying, this system will crush me and everyone like me, and my zerzetzung post will become lore when it could become fact, freeing people from a vast nearly invisible tyranny they do not know is holding them down.
If it continues the way it is going, if the bill of rights goes away, I promise you this will be no planet anyone like you or me will want to live on.
I'm not kidding around, there is a lot at stake here. I hope you can see that. If you have any ideas how I might be more effective, besides never making typos, I am all ears. I think your work here is important too btw fwiw, keep it up.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday September 28 2019, @01:45PM (4 children)
There's no way around that. History is as unstoppable as a speeding train and individual humans rarely change it unless they are very fortunately positioned. I've known for a long, long time what was coming, and even still some of it surprises me a bit. Just try and disappear, make your death as peaceful as possible, and defend yourself until then. People are not worth the effort of trying to save. To hell with them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:29PM (3 children)
I really don't think I could hide anymore, nor could I afford it.
I'm kindof like stuck here and all I have left is a keyboard and the truth.
I don't think it's really that bad, all these problems are in the mind.
And if we can't change it, the bunker life is going to bite.
What's that saying, never doubt a few people can change the world, it's all that ever has?
And have you been around the kids at all? They sure aren't giving up, are you going to be the one to tell them to?
They're not going to have a chance if every single attempt they make to organize is subverted by undercover police and no one warned them about it.
You have to pick a side. The kids will find your bunker and root you out. They are going to be pissed at everyone who doesn't help them.
I was once a kid and every attempt I made to organize was subverted by undercover police.
I'm not in a good mood about it.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 29 2019, @01:36AM (2 children)
I've already long since decided that if we end up in either another civil war and people are killing one another in the streets for food, or if we end up in East Germany 2.0 (now mit uber-AI fur das Kurtintwitchen und der neighborspyin!) I'm just going to commit suicide. I have the knowledge, the means, and the method; it involves the metabolic properties of a certain tertiary alcohol, a large dose of dopamine D2 antagonists, and a bunch of old beta-blockers I have lying around just for extra insurance. There's nothing left for me in this world and nothing worth learning that's equal to the price of the suffering that will come with it in that milieu.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday September 29 2019, @08:34AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism [wikipedia.org]
So in the face of people and organizations you despise, before anywhere near the point where there is any actual reason to give up, when you actually have time to actually do something, you give up anyway.
And post in clearnet your actual suicidal ideations.
I just don't find that appropriate or in any way constructive, it would have been better left unsaid.
And fits a distributing pattern of what I call 'craven negation' of my ideas.
There are literally 100 or 1000 jumping off points in what I am writing for things anyone could do, and instead I find people who respond like this.
It goes like this 'everything sucks!'
I respond, 'I agree, but after long term analysis of the problem, here are some people working on things who need help, and here are some thing I need help with which could really make a difference. At least we can try and help the kids out.'
Response 'YOU'RE CRAZY! WHEN THINGS GET BAD I'M GOING TO FINALLY DO IT, BABY!'
really wtf color me disappointed
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:42AM
Maybe I just don't have the same fire in the belly you do. I'm tired, that's all. If things don't all go straight to Hell, then I'll keep on going, but I've seen enough history to know where this could go and can read the waves of probability well enough to know where it's likely *to* go. Killing myself is a last-ditch emergency escape; it's not going to happen until things get completely anarchic here, think "widepsread food riots, infrastructure utterly decayed, mass shootings on a minute-by-minute basis."
What would be the point of living in a world like that? What would I learn from a death by slow starvation or fast lead? If we get to the point where, as I've said before, the Grim Reaper is (metaphorically) sitting across the room from me, cleaning her nails on her scythe and passing remarks along the lines of A BIT LOUD OUT THERE, HMM...?, then I'm not going to keep her waiting. Death holds no fear for me; I've lived the best I could, done much more good than harm, and have nothing more to learn from that sort of torturous fate. When the dunghill hits the windmill, I am out before I suffocate in falling shit meteors.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @06:34AM
maybe one can share the drm usb dongle via samba over the network?
or even network drive map-it to say ... /drmdongle and then use it as /srv/www/htdocs.
dont forget to register a onion or "www.drmdongle.info" for it ...
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday September 28 2019, @09:19AM
There was a time even I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I was uncertain about a path forward, or thought I had nothing to contribute. I am still astounded that so many suit wearing flag worshipping americans are selling out our country to crass plutarchs and foreign countries, I always kindof thought they would have *some* kind of backbone. The soldiers and officers and police I have met sure don't seem like such cucks, but here we are getting epsteined. And then on top of that so many people who chose to be police officers and military officers are gaslighting the hell out of the civilian population while epstein flies around with Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak.
I used to wonder but those days are past, too many things I predicted have come true and now I know what we can do. Some paths forward are on my website, and a lot of that is links to the work of other people smarter than myself. I am just getting started.
Call me crazy, call me wrong, I will argue/discuss with you as long as I am drawing breath and you are polite, but I am a single human being and I am neither a robot or a shill. And if I toot my own horn for a second, I am one of the best and most prolific writers in the history of the english language. That's what I think people really hate when they say I'm crazy, I write how they wish they could. Freely.
Crazy is when you keep doing the same thing over and over without success. I have tried so many things, but I haven't tried what I am doing now.
The truth is crazy, people are destroying their own planet for fantasy $'s in computers which have no tangency to reality, there are no longer enough goods and services in the world for all of those 000,000's. I have no allegiance or buy in to this system, I have only survived by maintaining my own mental space independent of it, as I suspect have many.
Try not watching CNN for a year then have a conversation with someone who does, they will call you crazy too. I stopped watching tv news completely so long ago I can't remember, the concept is abhorrent to me, it's clearly one of the major roots of all of the problems, the ease with which people are shortcircuited with graphics and flashing lights to believe literally anything, like that there is proof epstein is dead.
I have been preparing for this world, the predictions I did not want to come true came true despite my best efforts, so it should be no wonder to people who have been more gullible I appear wildly incongruous or 'crazy'(to people with a limited vocabulary and a penchant for unqualified armchair diagnosis over distance)
Thank you for the kind words, made my day. But I am also not joking that I could use a hand, if I cannot earn money by writing and speaking my viewpoint, or share my story with a journalist who understands the gravity of what I am saying, this system will crush me and everyone like me, and my zerzetzung post will become lore when it could become fact, freeing people from a vast nearly invisible tyranny they do not know is holding them down.
If it continues the way it is going, if the bill of rights goes away, I promise you this will be no planet anyone like you or me will want to live on.
I'm not kidding around, there is a lot at stake here. I hope you can see that. If you have any ideas how I might be more effective, besides never making typos, I am all ears. I think your work here is important too btw fwiw, keep it up.