Did you notice something different when you booted up your Mac this morning? You may have noticed you were greeted by an notice from Apple, which pushed out an automatic security upgrade.
That’s the first time Apple has sent Macintosh customers a software upgrade that installs automatically. It has lagged behind rival Microsoft in this area.
The fix itself is significant, too. Apple fixed the code that syncs the computer’s clock because it said “a remote attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code.”
The patch is for OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5, OS X Mavericks v10.9.5 and OS X Yosemite v10.10.1.
Automatic updates for Microsoft Windows have been around for nearly 15 years and are seen as a critical feature. Because it dominated the market, hackers aimed mostly at Windows. But Apple has gained on Microsoft, and hackers have increasingly focused on Macs as a target.
— CNNMoney’s David Goldman contributed to this report.