Yesterday we were sitting in someones room. She has a macbook with OS X 10.6. I don't know much about OS X but here's something weird. After like 10 minutes it automatically locks so it asks for a password. The rest of the screen wasn't black but just made a bit darker. It can be compared to a windows UAC prompt, there the screen also get's darker but everything is visible. For fun someone tried to enter a password, and it was wrong. Then he tried again with the password "TIETEN" (yes ), and he says he accidentally hit 2 other keys. And guess what? IT UNLOCKED?!! Now how on earth is that possible? She says that when it automatically locks sometimes the screen just gets darker like now and sometimes it goes completely black (except for the prompt of course). So is there a bug in the OS X login prompt? Or (very unlikely) if the login works with PW hashes, is there a hash collision between her real PW and TIETEN + some key? And no, TIETEN isn't her real password Or could she have set something unsafe in the security settings?
I don't have an OS X install I can check on right now, but I don't recall the desktop staying visible when it's locked (after all that's one of the reasons for locking the screen). Are you sure that was the regular Snow Leopard lock screen and not some other application's lock screen?
I have no idea, but it looked like the normal passwordprompt, the window that had focus before the prompt was google chrome, but you couldn't do anything because of the pw prompt obviously. The only thing I know was that the first attempt failed and then the second one suddenly worked with a wrong pw. It's not really an issue, but I find it interesting cause this shouldn't have happened, even with unsafe settings or whatever. A pw prompt is and stays a pw promt, and it's designed to keep people out.
Not normal. I never saw that since my first Mac in 1999. Maybe time to run ClamXav & to reset password using Mac OS X install disk ?
in terminal aka S single user mode. rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone might have to goto the folder cd /var/db then rm -rf .AppleSetupDone now when u boot it will ask to make new user.. still keeping old user files.
sounds like bulls**t to me.... perhaps someone changed her password. I know 10.6 is flawed but not like that. You have less than 5 minutes from a fresh boot to go and change your password without providing it. I wouls also check and see if someone put or changed a screensaver. Possible an energy saver pref... I have tried adding en to my password and it doesnt let me in... If so paranoid log in from a different (admin) account and delete hers (archive or save it in case) and create another account and test. If it truly works the way you say then you have won an easter egg!