14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has finally publicly responded to the iPhone security concerns that made the rounds in the last few weeks, with the company specifically addressing Google’s disclosure of vulnerabilities allegedly exploited by hackers for nearly two years.
Apple says the two years that Google referred to were actually just two months, as the company fixed the discovered vulnerabilities shortly after finding them.
And what’s more, the company claims that when Google reached out to share the security flaws, Apple engineers were already working on patching them, which means that it wasn’t the search giant the one that first discovered the bugs in the first place.
“All evidence indicates that these website attacks were only operational for a brief period, roughly two months, not “two years” as Google implies. We fixed the vulnerabilities in question in February — working extremely quickly to resolve the issue just 10 days after we learned about it. When Google approached us, we were already in the process of fixing the exploited bugs,” Apple says.
“Sophisticated attacks”
Apple also says that the exploits weren’t as broad as Google claimed, describing the attacks as sophisticated and specifically aimed at specific targets.
“The sophisticated attack was narrowly focused, not a broad-based exploit of iPhones “en masse” as described. The attack affected fewer than a dozen websites that focus on content related to the Uighur community. Regardless of the scale of the attack, we take the safety and security of all users extremely seriously,” Apple notes.
Then, Apple says that, in reality, iPhone users have never been exposed and their private activities remained secure all the time, no matter what Google claims.
“Google’s post, issued six months after iOS patches were released, creates the false impression of “mass exploitation” to “monitor the private activities of entire populations in real time,” stoking fear among all iPhone users that their devices had been compromised. This was never the case,” the iPhone maker emphasizes.
In the end, Apple emphasizes that security remains a priority for the company, emphasizing that despite all these reports and security concerns, “iOS security is unmatched.”