Apple's remote access feature, that you would make remotely accessible for obvious reasons, apparently had a critical authentication bug.
Apple did not ship a security patch for this, allowing the vulnerability to be exploited a week later despite "automatically install security updates" being on.
Yes, OP could have prevented this by putting an additional VPN authentication layer in front of the Mac's built-in remote access.
That doesn't excuse the mistakes on Apple's part.
Let's first establish that Apple definitely has a stake in this.
How long they can come up with a fix and then distribute them, that's a question. You can't expect any company to fix a vulnerability within 5min. Whether one week is too long or their delivery mechanism is good, I can't tell, and I don't think there is a standard in the entire industry.
That doesn't mean it's useful to write an article about "I didn't do my part BUT you are too slow". Even if Apple somehow fixes this within an hour of the disclosure and delivers the update, with the bad configuration, the machine is still vulnerable within that window. Does that change the nature of the narrative?
An actively and easily exploited (just a port scan), and high-impact root RCE needs faster patching than one week.
When there was a more user visible bug (2017, empty root password gives you root, CVE-2017-13872), Apple managed to remotely patch this across all supported macOS versions in about 26 hours + next macOS online, end to end, without user intervention or manual updates.
And that was a decade ago before Apple built “rapid response security updates”
But I find it egregious that they didn't roll it out as a security update at all, which is why it was not automatically installed in OP's case, even though the fix was already available.
I mean, what else requires a hotfix via security update if not a fatal flaw in your remote access authentication leading to full root access, that is actively being exploited in the wild?
Also, it's not really on the user to gate remote access behind an additional firewall and authentication layer. This is something that just has to work securely.
If it doesn't, that's understandable, but still hardly the user's fault.
> Also, it's not really on the user to gate remote access behind an additional firewall and authentication layer. This is something that just has to work securely.
About that, I have a bridge to sell.