A null password is valid - if that is the way you configure the security. It may not be a good idea but that does not make it invalid - for years I ran Windows with a blank password so that it auto logged in at home as I was the only user and nothing on the machine that needed to be secured.

In reply to a post by ian72:

A null password is valid - if that is the way you configure the security.

Accepting what you say, it's a bit of an oxymoron

"" isn't a null entry. (Check your C programming - which is, after all, what these utilities are written in - a pointer to "" is not a null pointer.)

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

a pointer to "" is not a null pointer.

Agreed, it isn't- it's a pointer to an empty string.

I just knew you'd take this sub-thread into pointless pedantry

I takes two to tango.

Tango isn't an Apple OS.

In reply to a post by billford:

Tango isn't an Apple OS.

Did you Google it?

Not an OS, but it takes two to use it. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tango-video-call-cha...

If other people have access to your computer

Is the important bit (as you know)...

Also, the issue isn't really the absence of a root password per se, since root is not enabled by default on MacOS (and never has been), but that it turns out it is trivially easy to enable it. I suspect Apple made the (obviously erroneous) assumption that only people who knew what they were doing would know how to enable root. So although the workaround is to add a password, that isn't the fix because it should be (but isn't) moot for most users.

This (if I have read correctly - was in a bit of a rush) was found looking for a solution to a different issue - how to reinstate an admin (non-root) account that has been accidentally de-admined.

I'm not convinced that this is a big deal. If you have physical access to an OS X machine you can start it in single user mode and have root access that way. The same is true of most UNIX based systems - with physical access you can easily get root access.

The exception being if the hard disk is encrypted; most systems will the require a password to access it. In that case, even booting with another OS and accessing the disk that way won't work.