Apple has finally fixed the FaceTime Flaw we reported on week before last. They issued a patch (12.1.4) for iPhones (5S+) and iPad Air+ and iPod Touch 6th gen+ on Friday after initially disabling the group chat on the server side. They fixed the server side early last week but still needed to patch the software on the phones, iPads and iPods. This has now been done.
If you disabled FaceTime on your devices, as was advised, then after you install the latest update for your device, it is safe to turn it on again.
The issue was discovered by a 14 year old boy, who was thanked by Apple in their statement, which is here:
We have fixed the Group FaceTime security bug on Apple’s servers and we will issue a software update to re-enable the feature for users next week. We thank the Thompson family for reporting the bug. We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we complete this process.
We want to assure our customers that as soon as our engineering team became aware of the details necessary to reproduce the bug, they quickly disabled Group FaceTime and began work on the fix. We are committed to improving the process by which we receive and escalate these reports, in order to get them to the right people as fast as possible. We take the security of our products extremely seriously and we are committed to continuing to earn the trust Apple customers place in us.
Don’t forget to install the update first before switching it back on.
Stay Safe.
CritchCorp Computers Ltd.
