Recently Apple has launched a "silent" security update regarding the NTP protocol, in which a Google researcher discovered a bug whereby an attacker could gain control of the system. I refer to the silent thing because the modification refers to a small file and the relaunch of a background process so there was no need to disturb the user in the process.
This update manages to patch the version of NTP to update it to the latest available to avoid the execution of arbitrary code through this protocol. However, it has only been released exclusively for the OS X versions 10.8 and upIn other words, only OS X Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite would be protected against possible threats, but what about the previous systems?
To check the version we have installed, just open the terminal and enter the following command:
ntpd --version
We should have a version equal to or greater than 4.2.8, if not, we will download the latest version of Xcode from the Apple developer portal Or from this link and we will proceed with the update. To know if we have the latest build by Apple, we will write the following:
what / usr / sbin / ntpd
If it matches the updated versions, our system will be protected against this threat. If not, we can download the latest version of NTP from the website using this link.
Then we will go to the download folder and double click on the tar.gz file to unzip it in the same download folder.
The following will be download this file to allow compilation in OS X and like the previous one, leave it in the downloads folder.
Last we will open the terminal and we will introduce these commands to configure and install the security patch:
-
cd ~ / Downloads / ntp-4.2.8
-
patch -p0 <~ / Downloads / patch-ntpd-ntp_io.c.diff
-
./configure --prefix = / usr
-
make
-
sudo make install
With this already would be patched the system and protected (for now) from possible threats.