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The additional isolation of system components from accounts with root privileges helps to prevent malware from being able to gain access to the system, where it could embed itself and take advantage of all of the system services running on a Mac.
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There was still a root account the difference is that when enabled, SIP poses additional restrictions on the root account, walling off certain portions of the system from access by an account with root level privileges. But it turns out the concept of the Mac being rootless was more of a security marketing gimmick than actual fact. OS X El Capitan was the first version of the Mac operating system to incorporate SIP, as well as the idea that the Mac operating system was now rootless that is, there was no longer a root account, the all-powerful primary account that had access to almost the entire system. SIP and related security protections in the Mac operating system have undergone changes with each release of the OS, but the basics of how the SIP system works have remained the same, including how SIP can be enabled, disabled, and have its current status checked on. Originally introduced with OS X El Capitan, System Integrity Protection, usually referred to as SIP, is a security feature built into the Mac operating system that’s designed to protect most system locations, system processes, and Kernel extensions from being written to, modified, or replaced.
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