best format for external hard drive mac high sierra

YouTube videos showcasing the bug's two variants are available below. While this issue appears to have been fixed in recent macOS versions, Edwards says that macOS 10.13.3 (and probably earlier) will also log the encryption password when the user encrypts an already-existing APFS-formatted external volume (instead of creating one).īoth issues are edge cases, affecting users that own external storage devices and use APFS formatting, so it is not a wide-reaching problem, for the time being. While in there, open Utilities, and lastly double-click on Disk Utility. Choose Applications from the left-side panel. Double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac hard drive visible on the top-right corner of the desktop screen. According to Edwards (and others') tests, this issue appears to affect only macOS 10.13 and 10.13.1, but not recent versions. To partition and format the drive with Disk Utility, follow these steps: 1. The bug affects versions of macOS High Sierra from v10.13 to the recent v10.13.3, but in different manners.Įdwards says that whenever a user creates a new APFS volume and chooses an encryption password, the Disk Utility.app will log the encryption password in the unified OS log. The bug affects different OS versions in different manners This bug goes against all well-established Apple development and security rules, according to which apps and utilities should use the Keychain app to store valuable information, and should definitely avoid storing passwords in cleartext.

The issue, if exploited, could allow an attacker easy access to the encryption password of encrypted APFS external volumes, such as USB thumb drives, portable hard drives, and other external storage mediums.

This time around, according to a report from Mac forensics expert Sarah Edwards, recent versions of macOS High Sierra are logging encryption passwords for APFS-formatted external drives in plaintext, and storing this information in non-volatile (on-disk) log files. MacOS High Sierra users are once again impacted by a major APFS bug after two other major vulnerabilities affected Apple's new filesystem format in the last five months.

Best format for external hard drive mac high sierra