Update your Apple devices now to fix a terrifying security bug
With the increasing number of security holes in Apple's operating system, it's high time someone come up with a way to fix these bugs.
There are a number of issues with regard to Apple’s operating systems that have come up in the recent past. For instance, the one discovered by Tyler Bohan. It was found that hackers could get easy access to your password by just sending you an infected iMessage. This security bug is, in fact, present in all versions of iOS and OS X except for iOS 9.3.3 and OS X 10.11.6.
According to Apple, approximately 14% iOS devices run iOS 8 or versions earlier than that. That would mean, about 97 million devices are vulnerable to an attack.
How the attack works:
The issues especially affect Image IO, a programming interface that reads and writes image data. If an attacker were to send someone a MMS containing malicious code in any type of file format like TIFF, JPEG or PNG, then the code would start executing as soon as it was received.
This attack naturally gives the hacker the liberty to browse through and download portions of a computer’s memory, which could contain sensitive information such as passwords and login credentials.
Quick fix for this issue:
Security Research firm, Sophos suggested turning the iMessage and MMS messaging off. This way you will have a limited reach to text messages and won’t receive image files either.
Even Google’s mobile operating system, Stagefright faced such an issue last year when a researcher at Zimperium zLabs discovered it. Around 950 million Android devices were exposed.