Debug switches … they’re useful for diagnosing and fixing stuff, but horrible for anything else.
RJS Software is first and foremost a writer of IBM iSeries and Microsoft-based software. We have a rich programming background and a wonderful crew of seasoned programmers … some of whom started back in the punch cards days of the 1960′s and 70′s. But as good as our programmers are, we still have errors in our code from time-to-time that find their way into a customer’s hands.
Let’s be realistic, when you write hundreds of thousands of lines of code, it’s inevitable that something will slip through the cracks. Luckily, our QA team catches the obvious stuff, but occasionally a small bug will slip past their keen eyes. These bugs are the ones that only appear within a unique situation employed by a unique customer. And with those, 99.9% are completely innocuous, but it’s the 0.1% we’re always concerned about catching and fixing immediately before a real problem occurs.
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Similarly, such is the case with Apple. About three months ago, they released an update for OS X Lion version 10.7.3. Shortly after, a German IT administrator discovered a bug while reviewing the var/logs/secure.log file. He noticed that his password was being passed plain text in the secure.log file, which caused him to immediately post the error in Apple’s forum. Unfortunately, the thread was largely ignored until last week when a security researcher ran into the very same problem. He started digging and discovered the bug was the result of a debug flag that was left enabled and writes passwords plain text. It’s not actually a bug at all, it’s simply a debugging option that is performing exactly as it was designed to. But as we ourselves find, sometimes those tiny errors that aren’t supposed to be present in the production build, somehow make it past a QA team. It happens to us … it even happens to Apple.
For most Mac home users, this doesn’t really mean anything to you. This particular debug option is designed for the HomeDirMounter service and most home users are not using server-assigned home directories/server-mapped shares. The folks this is a show stopper for, however, are corporations and schools that deploy Macs in large scale where server-assigned home-share mapping is routine business.
The good news is if you haven’t migrated to OS X Lion 10.7.3 from 10.7.2, you’re in good shape. The debug flag isn’t enabled in 10.7.2. For those who have migrated, the soon-to-be released 10.7.4 version will have this debug flag disabled.
