14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has released a massive security patch for its 3rd generation of Apple TV devices, the ones that are running on a modified iOS operating system.
Apple TV version 7.2.1 was launched on February 25 and fixes 61 vulnerabilities in 23 different Apple TV components, such as the Kernel component, bootp, CloudKit, Code Signing, WekKit, DiskImages, ImageIO, IOKit, Office Viewer, the Location Framework, and many more.
Twenty-four of the fixed issues were found in the WebKit engine, a component utilized by the TV's built-in browser to navigate the Internet.
Based on their CVE identifiers, most of these issues were discovered and fixed last year. Most of them are also part of Apple's previous security bulletins, having already been delivered to other products like OS X Yosemite, Safari, and El Capitan.
The delay stems from the fact that Apple uses a modified iOS architecture for Apple TV 3rd generation devices, which needed extra work to port the original patches.
Taking a closer look over the security advisory, we see that attackers could executed malicious code on a user's TV box, could have exploited loopholes to gain access to the victim's personal information, and could have caused the device to malfunction and crash (DoS state).
Apple TV 4th generation devices, running tvOS, received their security patch last month, when Apple released tvOS version 9.1.1.