Posted on by Jack Eisenberg
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08
Jul

Ensure Your iPhone has Been Updated to Latest Version of iOS 12

I confess to not knowing much about Apple’s iOS.  My area of focus is the Windows operating system.  However, today I read about a flaw that will cause iMacs and iPhones that are not using the latest version of iOS 12 to be vulnerable to a flaw in the iMessage feature that can render the device unusable.

According to this article, researchers at Google discovered this critical vulnerability in April, and quietly informed Apple.  Apple released an iOS 12.3 update in mid-May which blocks this vulnerability.  However, the only way your equipment will have this version installed is if you have been allowing your devices to automatically apply security updates.

On July 4th, having waited sufficiently long for most users to have the update applied on their systems, the researcher published a paper describing the iMessage vulnerability and its exploit.  Now that the information about the vulnerability has been made public, you are urged to verify that your iMac and iPhone are running the latest version of iOS 12. The author of the article indicates that an unpatched iMac will reboot.  However, due to the way the iPhone’s reboot process is implemented, an unpatched iPhone will never exit the reboot loop; and to regain use of the device, you will need to do a complete restore of the factory image.  This means you will lose all information that was on the device.

Since I don’t own an iMac or iPhone, I cannot tell you how to get the update.  However, you can probably find that information online – just be careful to avoid opening any iMessages until you do!  

Jack Eisenberg is the owner of Safe and Secure Computing and regularly contributes computer security related articles.    

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Jack Eisenberg

Jack is the owner of Safe and Secure Computing and JEM Software, with 40-plus years of programming, system design and consulting experience in the computer field. His businesses provide computer security, website design and hosting services to clients in the Windsor-Detroit area.