{"id":11212,"date":"2015-05-13T09:55:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T13:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=11212"},"modified":"2021-06-30T16:37:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T20:37:37","slug":"mac-firmware-passwords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/13\/mac-firmware-passwords\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac Firmware Passwords"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT204455\">Apple<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VanguardVivian\/status\/597523200256450561\">Vivian<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT204455\"><p>Setting a firmware password in OS X prevents your Mac from starting up from any device other than the built in hard drive. Locking your Mac from Find My Mac also sets a firmware password that you&rsquo;ll then need to enter in order to use your Mac.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you don&rsquo;t set a firmware password, someone can boot the Mac into Recovery Mode and reset the password on your main partition. This would allow access to all unencrypted (i.e. non-Keychain) data. However, the firmware password isn&rsquo;t <em>that<\/em> secure because <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT203409\">Apple can bypass it<\/a>. Plus, the drive could be physically removed from your Mac and attached to a different Mac. So, if you want to prevent access to your data, it&rsquo;s better to use FileVault. The firmware password only prevents your Mac from being booted without access to your data, which probably doesn&rsquo;t matter much.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple (via Vivian): Setting a firmware password in OS X prevents your Mac from starting up from any device other than the built in hard drive. Locking your Mac from Find My Mac also sets a firmware password that you&rsquo;ll then need to enter in order to use your Mac. If you don&rsquo;t set a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-06-30T20:37:39Z","apple_news_api_id":"e32174ec-5a30-4857-83c1-30daad51e040","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-06-30T20:37:40Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A4yF07FowSFeDwTDarVHgQA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[706,30,2088,981,355,48],"class_list":["post-11212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-filevault","tag-mac","tag-macos-recovery","tag-passwords","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11213,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions\/11213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}