Apple Takes Drastic Measures to Stop a Nasty FaceTime Bug
It’s often hard to tell just how seriously to take reports of a new vulnerability. The jargon is inscrutable, and the skills needed to pull off the attacks are possessed only by highly skilled professionals. But a bug afflicting Apple’s FaceTime chat has no such ambiguity. How bad is it? Rather than risk exposing people to it, Apple pulled the plug on FaceTime group chats altogether.
Unlike other high-profile gaffes, what makes this bug so alarming isn’t the depth of knowledge someone could glean by exploiting it. It doesn’t give hackers access to your emails or banking information. Instead, it lets a FaceTime caller listen in on whatever’s happening on the other end of the line—before the recipient answers the phone. With a few extra steps, they could trigger a video feed as well.
The vulnerability was first discovered by a 14-year-old in Arizona, who found that he could eavesdrop on his friends when setting up a chat for a round of Fortnite. He told his mother, who in turn first attempted to notify Apple on January 20, and received no response to various inquiries for over a week.
