A security patch released by Apple mistakenly disables the Ethernet connection on Macs

Although hateful, most of the times are unavoidable and it is that software bugs in updates are the order of the day and many companies "screw up" when they launch some type of security patch or performance improvement for specific software, which effectively They solve certain sections but make others worse.

This has been the case with Apple in its latest release in the form of a security patch, which has vacated without notice, the Ethernet port for iMac and MacBook Pro laptop users.

The downside of all this is that the update has been carried out in a transparent way, that is, without user intervention and without the user being able to realize what is being installed. This is possible if the user himself has granted permission to the system to automatically install updates from System Preferences -> App Store.

The update in question is called «031-51913 Incompatible Kernel Extension Configuration Data 3.28.1»Which, apparently, puts the Broadcom BCM5701 drivers on a blacklist.

Apple removed the problematic update from its servers and replaced the previous 3.26 update instead, although such reinstalling the previous version did not fix the problem. To date, version 3.28.2 has already been released, which solves the bug permanently.

All those users who have already installed the problematic update cannot use the Ethernet port of their Mac forcing to use the Wi-Fi connection to access the internet. The simplest and most direct solution if you have a backup is to access Time Machine or backup program that we have configured and recover the previous folder just before the happy update. This folder is in the following path:

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleKextExcludeList.kext