Macos Mojave For Macbook Pro 2014


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Introduction

Original Apple SSD’s for the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are very expensive, especially compared to the price of standard NVMe SSD’s designed for Windows PC’s. macOS Mojave (and High Sierra) supports NVMe drives as boot device in MacBook Pro models released from late 2013 to 2015 and MacBook Air models from 2013 to 2017.

Why would I want to do this?

Your macbook is fully supported on Mojave. There are no NVidia web drivers for Mojave, but that generally only concerns desktop PC's running MacOS (possibly also EGPU users). It's currently a big deal in the Hackintosh community and why a lot of people have moved to AMD graphics.

  • Standard NVMe drives are cheaper. Much cheaper than original Apple drives.
  • Many of the current NVMe drives are faster than the stock Apple drives that shipped in the MacBook Pro.
  • NVMe drives are much easier to source. They can be bought everywhere online or in IT stores. Original Apple drives are almost impossible to buy new, so you’re limited to buying used drives on sites like Ebay for inflated prices.

What do I need?

  • First you’ll need a suitable adapter. The SSD connector on the MacBook Pro motherboard is not a standard NVMe interface, so you need an adapter. The best adapter currently available is the Sintech NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card. This is a full length card that holds the SSD much more securely than the short, connector-only adapters that many sellers are selling online.
  • A USB memory stick of at least 8GB capacity, to use for installation of macOS Mojave on the new SSD
  • A suitable NVME SSD. Note that certain SSD’s have compatibility issues with macOS – including the Samsung PM981 and the Samsung 970 EVO Plus (the original 970 EVO works fine, though). Some of the best NVMe SSD’s currently available, with tested macOS compatibility, are the Samsung 970 EVO, the Samsung 970 PRO, the Sandisk Extreme and the WD Black.
  • A Pentalobe screwdriver is needed to remove the screws on the base of the MacBook Pro.
  • A Torx T5 screwdriver, to remove the screw securing the SSD and slide it out of the slot.
  • A MacBook Pro or MacBook Air from late 2013 onwards (not USB-C models) that has been updated to macOS High Sierra or Mojave.

Installation process

Make sure that you have upgraded your Mac to High Sierra or Mojave with the original drive installed before beginning. This ensures that the EFI firmware in your Mac is updated to the latest version with NVMe support.

Also, to be safe, make a backup of your data and important files to an external drive. You can copy this back to the new drive after installing macOS.

  1. Create a bootable USB installer of macOS Mojave following these instructions from Apple.
  2. Turn the MacBook Pro face down on the desk and, using your Pentalobe screwdriver, carefully remove the screws on the bottom. Once all screws are removed, lift off the bottom plate.
  3. Peel up the black tape covering the battery connector and disconnect the battery from the motherboard using a plastic prying tool or your fingernail.
  4. With the battery nearest you, you should see the SSD at the rear of the motherboard, on the right. Using your Torx T5 screwdriver, remove the screw securing the SSD and slide the SSD from its socket.
  5. Fit your new SSD into the adapter, making sure that it’s fully inserted in the slot. The screw hole on the SSD should align with the one on the adapter.
  6. Insert the adapter and the SSD into the slot on the motherboard. It should be inserted at an angle of around 30 degrees.
  7. Gently screw the drive into place using the screw provided with the adapter. Be careful not to screw it in too tight as it could cause the SSD to bend. It should be screwed in firmly enough to hold it in place but not over-tightened.
  8. Reconnect the battery to the motherboard and replace the plastic tape.
  9. Replace the bottom case, putting the screws back in the same place you removed them from (they may look the same but they’re actually different sizes).
  10. Plug your bootable macOS installation USB into a USB port and turn on the Mac while holding the Option key. From the boot screen that appears, choose the USB drive.
  11. Once the USB has booted, it’s time to format the drive. Open the Disk Utility app from the menu and select your NVMe SSD in the pane to the left. Click “Erase” then select APFS as the format and “GUID Partition Map” as the scheme.
  12. After the drive has finished formatting, quit the Disk Utility app and select “Install macOS” from the menu. Select your freshly formatted NVMe SSD as the installation drive and macOS will be installed to the new drive.
  13. Once the installation finishes, the computer will boot into macOS and you can restore your old files from the backup you made before starting.

…and that’s it. You should now have a working NVMe drive in your Mac for a fraction of the cost of an original Apple drive.

NVMe drives are compatible with the following MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models

  • MacBook Air 11-inch and 13-inch (Mid 2013)
  • MacBook Pro 13-inch and 15-inch (Retina, Late 2013)
  • MacBook Air 11-inch and 13-inch (Early 2014)
  • MacBook Pro 13-inch and 15-inch (Retina, Mid 2014)
  • MacBook Air 11-inch and 13-inch (Early 2015)
  • MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina, Early 2015)
  • MacBook Pro 15-inch (Retina, Mid 2015)

About Apple security updates

For our customers' protection, Apple doesn't disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until an investigation has occurred and patches or releases are available. Recent releases are listed on the Apple security updates page.

For more information about security, see the Apple Product Security page. You can encrypt communications with Apple using the Apple Product Security PGP Key.

Apple security documents reference vulnerabilities by CVE-ID when possible.

macOS Mojave 10.14

Released September 24, 2018

Bluetooth

Available for: iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2014), iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015), Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac mini Server (Mid 2011), Mac mini (Late 2012), Mac mini Server (Late 2012), Mac mini (Late 2014), Mac Pro (Late 2013), MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2011), MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011), MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2012), MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012), MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013), MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013), MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2015), MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012), MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2013), MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), and MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)

Impact: An attacker in a privileged network position may be able to intercept Bluetooth traffic

Description: An input validation issue existed in Bluetooth. This issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-5383: Lior Neumann and Eli Biham

The updates below are available for these Mac models: MacBook (Early 2015 and later), MacBook Air (Mid 2012 and later), MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 and later), Mac mini (Late 2012 and later), iMac (Late 2012 and later), iMac Pro (all models), Mac Pro (Late 2013, Mid 2010, and Mid 2012 models with recommended Metal-capable graphics processor, including MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 and Sapphire Radeon PULSE RX 580)

afpserver

Impact: A remote attacker may be able to attack AFP servers through HTTP clients

Description: An input validation issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4295: Jianjun Chen (@whucjj) from Tsinghua University and UC Berkeley

Entry added October 30, 2018

App Store

Impact: A malicious application may be able to determine the Apple ID of the owner of the computer

Description: A permissions issue existed in the handling of the Apple ID. This issue was addressed with improved access controls.

CVE-2018-4324: Sergii Kryvoblotskyi of MacPaw Inc.

AppleGraphicsControl

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: A validation issue was addressed with improved input sanitization.

CVE-2018-4417: Lee of the Information Security Lab Yonsei University working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry added October 30, 2018

Application Firewall

Impact: A sandboxed process may be able to circumvent sandbox restrictions

Description: A configuration issue was addressed with additional restrictions.

CVE-2018-4353: Abhinav Bansal of LinkedIn Inc.

Entry updated October 30, 2018

APR

Impact: Multiple buffer overflow issues existed in Perl

Description: Multiple issues in Perl were addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2017-12613: Craig Young of Tripwire VERT

CVE-2017-12618: Craig Young of Tripwire VERT

Entry added October 30, 2018

ATS

Impact: A malicious application may be able to elevate privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4411: lilang wu moony Li of Trend Micro working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry added October 30, 2018

ATS

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: An out-of-bounds read was addressed with improved bounds checking.

CVE-2018-4308: Mohamed Ghannam (@_simo36)

Entry added October 30, 2018

Auto Unlock

Impact: A malicious application may be able to access local users AppleIDs

Description: A validation issue existed in the entitlement verification. This issue was addressed with improved validation of the process entitlement.

CVE-2018-4321: Min (Spark) Zheng, Xiaolong Bai of Alibaba Inc.

CFNetwork

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4126: Bruno Keith (@bkth_) working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry added October 30, 2018

CoreFoundation

Impact: A malicious application may be able to elevate privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4412: The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

Entry added October 30, 2018

CoreFoundation

Impact: An application may be able to gain elevated privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4414: The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

Entry added October 30, 2018

CoreText

Impact: Processing a maliciously crafted text file may lead to arbitrary code execution

Description: A use after free issue was addressed with improved memory management.

CVE-2018-4347: Vasyl Tkachuk of Readdle

Entry added October 30, 2018, updated December 13, 2018

Crash Reporter

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: A validation issue was addressed with improved input sanitization.

CVE-2018-4333: Brandon Azad

CUPS

Impact: In certain configurations, a remote attacker may be able to replace the message content from the print server with arbitrary content

Description: An injection issue was addressed with improved validation.

CVE-2018-4153: Michael Hanselmann of hansmi.ch

Entry added October 30, 2018

CUPS

Impact: An attacker in a privileged position may be able to perform a denial of service attack

Description: A denial of service issue was addressed with improved validation.

CVE-2018-4406: Michael Hanselmann of hansmi.ch

Entry added October 30, 2018

Dictionary

Impact: Parsing a maliciously crafted dictionary file may lead to disclosure of user information

Description: A validation issue existed which allowed local file access. This was addressed with input sanitization.

CVE-2018-4346: Wojciech Reguła (@_r3ggi) of SecuRing

Entry added October 30, 2018

DiskArbitration

Impact: A malicious application may be able to modify contents of the EFI system partition and execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges if secure boot is not enabled

Description: A permissions issue existed in DiskArbitration. This was addressed with additional ownership checks.

CVE-2018-4296: Vitaly Cheptsov

Entry updated January 22, 2019

dyld

Macbook pro mgx72ll/a

Impact: A malicious application may be able to modify protected parts of the file system

Description: A configuration issue was addressed with additional restrictions.

CVE-2018-4433: Vitaly Cheptsov

Entry updated January 22, 2019

fdesetup

Impact: Institutional recovery keys may be incorrectly reported as present

Description: A logic issue was addressed with improved state management.

CVE-2019-8643: Arun Sharma of VMWare

Entry added August 1, 2019

Firmware

Impact: An attacker with physical access to a device may be able to elevate privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2017-5731: Intel and Eclypsium

Macos Mojave For Macbook Pro 2014

CVE-2017-5732: Intel and Eclypsium

CVE-2017-5733: Intel and Eclypsium

CVE-2017-5734: Intel and Eclypsium

CVE-2017-5735: Intel and Eclypsium

Entry added June 24, 2019

Grand Central Dispatch

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4426: Brandon Azad

Entry added October 30, 2018

Heimdal

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4331: Brandon Azad

CVE-2018-4332: Brandon Azad

CVE-2018-4343: Brandon Azad

Entry added October 30, 2018

Hypervisor

Impact: Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and address translations may allow unauthorized disclosure of information residing in the L1 data cache to an attacker with local user access with guest OS privilege via a terminal page fault and a side-channel analysis

Description: An information disclosure issue was addressed by flushing the L1 data cache at the virtual machine entry.

CVE-2018-3646: Baris Kasikci, Daniel Genkin, Ofir Weisse, and Thomas F. Wenisch of University of Michigan, Mark Silberstein and Marina Minkin of Technion, Raoul Strackx, Jo Van Bulck, and Frank Piessens of KU Leuven, Rodrigo Branco, Henrique Kawakami, Ke Sun, and Kekai Hu of Intel Corporation, Yuval Yarom of The University of Adelaide

Entry added October 30, 2018

iBooks

Impact: Parsing a maliciously crafted iBooks file may lead to disclosure of user information

Description: A configuration issue was addressed with additional restrictions.

Mac Os Mojave Macbook Pro 2014

CVE-2018-4355: evi1m0 of bilibili security team

Entry added October 30, 2018

Intel Graphics Driver

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: A validation issue was addressed with improved input sanitization.

CVE-2018-4396: Yu Wang of Didi Research America

CVE-2018-4418: Yu Wang of Didi Research America

Entry added October 30, 2018

Intel Graphics Driver

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: A memory initialization issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4351: Appology Team @ Theori working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry added October 30, 2018

Intel Graphics Driver

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4350: Yu Wang of Didi Research America

Entry added October 30, 2018

Intel Graphics Driver

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4334: Ian Beer of Google Project Zero

Entry added October 30, 2018

Intel Graphics Driver

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4451: Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos

CVE-2018-4456: Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos

Entry added December 21, 2018, updated January 22, 2019

IOHIDFamily

Impact: A malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.

CVE-2018-4408: Ian Beer of Google Project Zero

Entry added October 30, 2018, updated August 1, 2019

IOKit

Impact: A malicious application may be able to break out of its sandbox

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4341: Ian Beer of Google Project Zero

CVE-2018-4354: Ian Beer of Google Project Zero

Entry added October 30, 2018

IOKit

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved state management.

CVE-2018-4383: Apple

Entry added October 30, 2018

IOUserEthernet

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4401: Apple

Entry added October 30, 2018

Kernel

Impact: A malicious application may be able to leak sensitive user information

Description: An access issue existed with privileged API calls. This issue was addressed with additional restrictions.

CVE-2018-4399: Fabiano Anemone (@anoane)

Entry added October 30, 2018

Kernel

Impact: An attacker in a privileged network position may be able to execute arbitrary code

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved validation.

CVE-2018-4407: Kevin Backhouse of Semmle Ltd.

Entry added October 30, 2018

Kernel

Macos Mojave Download For Windows

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4336: Brandon Azad

CVE-2018-4337: Ian Beer of Google Project Zero

CVE-2018-4340: Mohamed Ghannam (@_simo36)

CVE-2018-4344: The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

CVE-2018-4425: cc working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative, Juwei Lin (@panicaII) of Trend Micro working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry updated October 30, 2018

LibreSSL

Impact: Multiple issues in libressl were addressed in this update

Description: Multiple issues were addressed by updating to libressl version 2.6.4.

CVE-2015-3194

Macos Mojave For Macbook Pro 2014 Free

CVE-2015-5333

CVE-2015-5334

CVE-2016-0702

Entry added October 30, 2018, updated December 13, 2018

Login Window

Impact: A local user may be able to cause a denial of service

Description: A validation issue was addressed with improved logic.

CVE-2018-4348: Ken Gannon of MWR InfoSecurity and Christian Demko of MWR InfoSecurity

Entry added October 30, 2018

mDNSOffloadUserClient

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4326: an anonymous researcher working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative, Zhuo Liang of Qihoo 360 Nirvan Team

Entry added October 30, 2018

MediaRemote

Impact: A sandboxed process may be able to circumvent sandbox restrictions

Description: An access issue was addressed with additional sandbox restrictions.

CVE-2018-4310: CodeColorist of Ant-Financial LightYear Labs

Entry added October 30, 2018

Microcode

Impact: Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and speculative execution of memory reads before the addresses of all prior memory writes are known may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis

Description: An information disclosure issue was addressed with a microcode update. This ensures that older data read from recently-written-to addresses cannot be read via a speculative side-channel.

CVE-2018-3639: Jann Horn (@tehjh) of Google Project Zero (GPZ), Ken Johnson of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC)

Entry added October 30, 2018

Security

Impact: A local user may be able to cause a denial of service

Description: This issue was addressed with improved checks.

CVE-2018-4395: Patrick Wardle of Digita Security

Entry added October 30, 2018

Security

Impact: An attacker may be able to exploit weaknesses in the RC4 cryptographic algorithm

Description: This issue was addressed by removing RC4.

CVE-2016-1777: Pepi Zawodsky

Spotlight

Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.

CVE-2018-4393: Lufeng Li

Entry added October 30, 2018

Symptom Framework

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: An out-of-bounds read was addressed with improved bounds checking.

CVE-2018-4203: Bruno Keith (@bkth_) working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry added October 30, 2018

Text

Impact: Processing a maliciously crafted text file may lead to a denial of service

Description: A denial of service issue was addressed with improved validation.

CVE-2018-4304: jianan.huang (@Sevck)

Entry added October 30, 2018

Wi-Fi

Impact: An application may be able to read restricted memory

Description: A validation issue was addressed with improved input sanitization.

CVE-2018-4338: Lee @ SECLAB, Yonsei University working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative

Entry added October 23, 2018

Additional recognition

Accessibility Framework

We would like to acknowledge Ryan Govostes for their assistance.

Core Data

We would like to acknowledge Andreas Kurtz (@aykay) of NESO Security Labs GmbH for their assistance.

CoreDAV

We would like to acknowledge Matthew Thomas of Verisign for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018, updated December 21, 2018

CoreGraphics

We would like to acknowledge Nitin Arya of Roblox Corporation for their assistance.

CoreSymbolication

We would like to acknowledge Brandon Azad for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018

CUPS

We would like to acknowledge Michael Hanselmann of hansmi.ch for their assistance.

Entry added August 1, 2019

IOUSBHostFamily

We would like to acknowledge Dragos Ruiu of CanSecWest for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018

Kernel

We would like to acknowledge Brandon Azad for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018

Mail

We would like to acknowledge Alessandro Avagliano of Rocket Internet SE, John Whitehead of The New York Times, Kelvin Delbarre of Omicron Software Systems, and Zbyszek Żółkiewski for their assistance.

Quick Look

We would like to acknowledge lokihardt of Google Project Zero, Wojciech Reguła (@_r3ggi) of SecuRing, and Patrick Wardle of Digita Security for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018

Security

We would like to acknowledge Christoph Sinai, Daniel Dudek (@dannysapples) of The Irish Times and Filip Klubička (@lemoncloak) of ADAPT Centre, Dublin Institute of Technology, Horatiu Graur of SoftVision, Istvan Csanady of Shapr3D, Omar Barkawi of ITG Software, Inc., Phil Caleno, Wilson Ding, an anonymous researcher for their assistance.

Entry updated June 24, 2019

SQLite

We would like to acknowledge Andreas Kurtz (@aykay) of NESO Security Labs GmbH for their assistance.

Terminal

We would like to acknowledge Federico Bento for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018, updated February 3, 2020

Time Machine

We would like to acknowledge Matthew Thomas of Verisign for their assistance.

Entry updated January 22, 2019

WindowServer

We would like to acknowledge Patrick Wardle of Digita Security for their assistance.

Entry added December 13, 2018