Remember that giant poster that Apple put up in Las Vegas during the recent Consumer Electronics Show that stated “what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone?”
Never mind.
A 14-year-old iPhone user discovered it is easy to listen in on someone else’s FaceTime conversations without anyone in the conversation knowing that someone is listening.
OOOPS!
The shockingly simple exploit works with any pair of iOS devices running iOS 12.1 or later. “The bug lets you call anyone with FaceTime, and immediately hear the audio coming from their phone – before the person on the other end has accepted or rejected the incoming call” according to Benjamin Mayo at 9to5Mac who first broke the story and adds “there’s a second part to this which can expose video too…”
Do you own an iPhone? If so, don’t use FaceTime for a while. As far as anyone knows, it is a bug only in FaceTime. Normal telephone calls apparently are not affected. Then again, all unencrypted telephone calls can easily be monitored by hackers and government spies alike. That includes calls made by cell phones as well as by old-fashioned wired telephones.
Apple says it is aware of the problem, has developed a fix, and will be rolling that fix out worldwide to iPhones worldwide within a few days.
Details may be found in an article by Davey Winder in Forbes at: http://bit.ly/2sPZHwG.
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Categories: Cell Phones
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