Apple Security Flaw: ‘It’s As Bad As you Could Imagine’ Says Professor
A major Apple security leak exposed users to major threats, from accessing emails to retrieving personal financial information. Apple Inc said on Saturday that it would issue a software update as soon as possible to eliminate the security risk.
Apple spokeswoman, Trudy Muller, spoke to Reuters about the new risk discovered, not only in their iPhones and iPads, but also in their notebooks and desktop computers using Mac OS X.
Muller said: “We are aware of this issue and already have a software fix that will be released very soon.”
Apple released a fix on Friday dealing with mobile devices running IOS; fortunately those mostly updated automatically. As soon as the fix was released experts tore it apart and found the same issues in the operating system for Apple computers.
While Apple’s spokeswoman declined to comment on those theories, professor Matthew Green, a cryptographer from the Johns Hopkins University, said: “It’s as bad as you could imagine, that’s all I can say.”
Another expert, Adam Langley who deals with programming issues at Google, noted on his personal blog that: “I believe that it’s just a mistake and I feel very bad for whomever might have slipped.”
The issues surround the way in which software recognizes digital certificates used by banking sites, Google, and Facebook, to establish encrypted connections.
As well as stealing personal information, hackers can also insert malicious web links and gain full control of the computer they target. No doubt Apple Inc will be issuing fixes as quickly and as quietly as they can in order to avoid a major security catastrophe.
The latest Apple security flaw could mean big trouble for the company, which needs to keep its reputation clean as far as customer’s personal information is concerned.
