Macs now at risk of bug more dangerous than Heartbleed

Forget accidentally bending your new iPhone — your Mac could be infected with a bug more dangerous than Heartbleed.

The new bug, Shellshock, creates a vulnerability in the "Bash" software that's found in Mac and Linux operating systems. Bash controls a computer's command prompt, which is "integral to the running of computers and is behind simple tasks such as opening up an application," CNBC reports.

If hackers were able to detect a security flaw in the Bash software, they could control your computer remotely. With Shellshock, hackers could insert code from remote locations to control your machine.

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"The difference in significance is that with Heartbleed... somebody could grab credentials of a user and do what they wanted, but in this case, if somebody is vulnerable, it potentially allows someone to get full system control of a victim's system," David Emm, a senior security research employee at Kaspersky Lab, told CNBC.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, has urged Mac and Linux users to "patch" or update their operating systems to protect their devices against the Shellshock bug.