Apple Just Patched The Shellshock Bug In OS X

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Last week, a big, nasty, freakishly widespread bug now dubbed “Shellshock” was discovered hiding in many UNIX-based systems, including OS X.

While Apple was quick to proclaim that the “vast majority” of OS X users weren’t susceptible to the bug and that only users who’d tinkered with “advanced settings” needed to act, that doesn’t mean they want to leave the door open even a bit. They’ve just pushed a security patch for the bug, and you probably want to nab it sooner than later.

The patch seemingly hasn’t made it into OS X’s built-in software update tool just yet, which just means you have to download it manually for now. Here’s the patch for Mavericks, for Lion, and for Mountain Lion. (The download link is different depending on which version of OS X you’re running, so make sure you’re grabbing the right one.)

Alas, it doesn’t look like there’s a patch for those still-in-beta, semi-private builds of OS X Yosemite just yet — the perils of running early release software, I suppose.

[Photo by Martin Cathrae, used under Creative Commons]