Additionally, you can go to the Macintosh HD > Users directory and see if any home directories for accounts other than your own look like disk image files (as opposed to folders). When you do this, a warning stating 'You're using an old version of FileVault' will appear if your account is using the legacy FileVault technology. In your account, go to the 'Security & Privacy' system preferences. If your system is one of these, then there are several things you can do to work around this bug: When you open the Security system preferences, the system will issue this message if you are using the Legacy FileVault technology (click for larger view).

Without these requirements, the passwords for user accounts are not logged by the bug, and are safe. The security hole will only affect people who upgraded from Snow Leopard who kept using their legacy FileVault setups and who have have then upgraded to the latest OS X 10.7.3.

This security hole will not affect any user who has purchased a new system with Lion on it, or who has formatted their old system and installed Lion fresh. The older FileVault technology in OS X encrypted a user's home folder and left the rest of the system unencrypted, but in the Lion version of the operating system, Apple replaced FileVault with a full-disk encryption option dubbed 'FileVault 2.' However, for compatibility Apple still supports the legacy FileVault that was enabled on upgraded accounts, though any new enabling of FileVault will require the use of FileVault 2.

The hole happened when an Apple software engineer apparently left a debugging flag enabled in the production release of OS X 10.7.3, which allowed the passwords to be logged for people who use the legacy FileVault home folder encryption scheme. While the hole may be a problem for a certain group of people who still use the legacy encryption scheme, there are several things that can be done about it. A security hole has recently been found in the latest version of OS X 10.7.3, through which a user's password may be written to a log file in plain text if that person is using the older legacy FileVault data encryption technology from past versions of OS X.

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