14 DAY TRIAL // Although Apple isn’t seeding any new iOS betas to developers, the company is hard at work patching up the latest reported bugs, including two security flaws and one potentially widespread battery drain issue that seems to be affecting even the newest generations of devices.
The confirmation comes straight from the Mac maker. In responding to queries about the latest discovered security flaws, a company spokesperson said, “[Apple] is aware of the issue and [we] are working on a fix which will be delivered in a future software update.”
The current iOS firmware is iOS 7.1.1, so the natural way to go about it would be to release iOS 7.1.2. Given the urgency of the issue (i.e. the bad press), the firmware should drop really soon. Unless Apple decides to wait until summer / fall to unleash iOS 8, but that probably won’t be the case.
Even if iOS 8 comes with said patches (and it should), a lot of people will continue to stick with iOS 7, and those people need security and a decently running operating system. Plus, some will not be able to upgrade to iOS 8 because the hardware won’t permit it. There’s a good chance iPhone 4 and iPad 2 will be dropped out of the mix this year.
The security issue Apple was responding to in the aforementioned statement is the widely reported Mail vulnerability discovered and reported by Andreas Kurtz. We did an interview with Malwarebytes to confirm that the flaw is not easily exploitable, but the company needs to take security matters serious nonetheless.
However, there’s another reported vulnerability in iOS 7 that Apple needs to patch. A Siri-enabled lockscreen flaw that allows a person to bypass the passcode lock has been demoed on YouTube and appears to be serious. While this one is also hard to exploit, a tinkerer with physical access to the handset can see all of the owner’s contact names and numbers.
Finally, there’s the battery drain epidemic that, by now, has been confirmed as widespread. More and more people are reporting issues after updating to iOS 7.1 and iOS 7.1.1, and while there are some workarounds to the drainage, it has become increasingly apparent that Apple needs to jump in and offer a fix of its own.
In all likelihood, iOS 7.1.2 will contain these three patches, plus some extra ones that we might not be aware of. As usual, the firmware should pack far more security patches than we’re allowed to know beforehand, but that’s a good thing because hackers read the news too.
Disclaimer
This is a Personal Thoughts piece reflecting the author’s personal opinion on matters relating to Apple and / or the products associated with the Apple brand. This article should not be taken as the official stance of Softpedia on Apple-related matters.