Apple fixed a critical security issue in Macintosh computers with an automatic and "seamless" update on Monday.
Given that the bug could have potentially allowed hackers to get control of a Mac remotely, Apple pushed the fix with its first-ever automatic update, which doesn't require the user to do anything -- in fact, the user might not even notice it.
"The update is seamless," Apple spokesperson Bill Evans told Reuters. "It doesn’t even require a restart."
The issue affected the network time protocol, or NTP, a component used to synchronize clocks on Apple's Mac OS X operating systems. The affected versions were: Mountain Lion v10.8.5, Mavericks v10.9.5 and Yosemite v10.10.1, according to Apple.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute disclosed the vulnerability in security bulletins on Friday.
Your Mac should automatically update, but if you want to check whether your system is up to date, type "what /usr/sbin/ntpd" in Terminal. The following are the updated versions that you should see if you've received the update: for Mountain Lion, ntp-77.1.1; for Mavericks, ntp-88.1.1, and for Yosemite, ntp-92.5.1.
APPLE-SA-2014-12-22-1 OS X NTP Security Update Mountain Lion: ntp-77.1.1 Mavericks: ntp-88.1.1 Yosemite: ntp-92.5.1— Andrew Laurence (@atlauren) December 22, 2014