Description: 'If a hint was set in Disk Utility when creating an APFS encrypted volume, the password was stored as the hint. This was addressed by clearing hint storage if the hint was the password, and by improving the logic for storing hints.' https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208165
So basically if you set a hint your entire disk encryption became useless because the hint storage gave your password away?
how??! In what context does a clear-text password end up anywhere, except as the input for a hash function.
I would guess that the bug was in the front-end code for the password form. At that point the code obviously has access to the plain text password. I’m imagining a copy-paste bug like this:
It's rather frightening that a bug as serious as this one got past Apple's QA. It seems like the list of known problems with the new Disk Utility is growing - recently there was a submission about how High Sierra's Disk Utility did not show unformatted disks.
Perhaps they were busy testing header font sizes in iOS?
It's rather frightening that a bug as serious as this one got past Apple's QA. It seems like the list of known problems with the new Disk Utility is growing - recently there was a submission about how High Sierra's Disk Utility did not show unformatted disks.
I really hope a head rolls for this mistake. That team needs some new leadership.
Or maybe: “I hope they improve and nobody loses their job”
I so wish Apple had not removed the older Sierra installer from the Mac AppStore... I need to update some machines but High Sierra does not seem ready for reliable use yet.
I just wish they had made APFS optional for SSDs (as it is if you install to spinning media). It seems like 99% of the problems I'm seeing reported for High Sierra are due to the filesystem (or apps using a brittle, hand-rolled method of disk access).
how??! In what context does a clear-text password end up anywhere, except as the input for a hash function.
You need to fetch the value to use as hint from the input somewhere. Doing a typo of writing passwordInput instead of passwordHintInput is not that unlikely, even though it is unfortunate.
Unless you visually connect the fields like the NeXT Interface Builder does.
I so wish Apple had not removed the older Sierra installer from the Mac AppStore... I need to update some machines but High Sierra does not seem ready for reliable use yet.
If you haven't updated yet, why would you need the Sierra installer? Nobody managing multiple machines would use a 1.0 anyway.
Depending on how old the OSX currently running is, some features (especially integration into other Apple devices, like unlock with watch or seamless switching to AirPods) are unavailable, but would be available in Sierra.
The Password got written in plain text on disk. It can possibly be recovered by some obscure technique (wear leveling reserve I'm looking at you) and should be considered burned.