An update to High Sierra has now gone live. It addresses the root password issue we first mentioned in this post.

“Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS”, said an Apple spokesperson in a statement to The Loop.

“When our security engineers became aware of the issue Tuesday afternoon, we immediately began working on an update that closes the security hole. This morning, as of 8 a.m., the update is available for download, and starting later today it will be automatically installed on all systems running the latest version (10.13.1) of macOS High Sierra.

We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again.”

The download is now available via the Mac App Store.