For the past few days, video editors have been panicking as a data corruption issue struck their Macs (typically 2013 Mac Pros),
preventing them from rebooting their systems properly. But what was the
cause? Their Avid Media Composer editing suite? MacOS itself? No -- it
turns out their browser was likely to blame. Google has acknowledged
that a recent Chrome release "may have shipped" with an updater bug
that corrupts the file system on Macs that either have System Integrity
Protection (SIP) turned off or don't support it in the first place. As
Avid Media Composer needs SIP turned off to get direct access to these
Macs' graphics systems, Chrome's buggy updater is free to wreak havoc on
the file system.
Google has stopped rolling out the flawed updater while it works on a
permanent fix. In the meantime, those with affected systems can boot
into macOS' recovery mode and use a series of Terminal commands to both
delete the offending updater and restore the damaged section of the file
system. This only affects people who've deliberately turned off SIP or
use an operating system before macOS Mavericks, so you'll likely know if
you're affected.
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