Apple’s MacOS is known to be one of the more secure operating systems out there. However, due to its increasing popularity and expanding user base, hackers and cybercriminals are starting to victimize iMacs and MacBooks more and more.
By accessing a computer’s microphones and cameras, hackers are awarded an open window into your life. They can spy on you at any time, without warning, recording your personal and professional footage.
This information can be used in a variety of ways, but commonly, images and conversations from an individual’s private life are held ransom, and subsequently released online to the world if the ransom demand is not met.
Thankfully, with the just-announced new MacBook Air, Apple made it much tougher to hijack its microphone.
New T2 security chip
A recently published Apple security document detailing the new MacBook Air’s T2 chip has revealed a brilliant new feature that protects its microphone from hijacking and spying.
With this feature, any T2-equipped laptop will disconnect the microphone whenever the lid is closed.
The idea is that since this disconnection is physically executed via hardware, malware and other software hacks can’t bypass it.
“This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed,” Apple wrote in the overview.
The MacBook Air’s camera, on the other hand, doesn’t get the same hardware disconnect feature since its view is already obstructed anyway when the lid is closed. Makes sense to me.
Other T2 security features:
Other security features detailed in the paper include the following:
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