A team of five security researchers took apart code for various Apple services including iCloud and ended up finding fifty five potential security threats. Most of these are quite risky for the average consumer, with 11 being critical. Of the remaining 44, 29 are high severity and 13 are medium severity with only 2 being low severity. This was part of a bug bounty program, and Apple ended up fixing 28 of these issues more or less immediately after paying out nearly $300,000 as part of the bounty that is associated with such programs in general.
These flaws are actually quite serious if you think about it. One major problem that they could potentially end up leading to has to do with things like malicious actors being able to hack your iCloud account. This would be a pretty serious breach, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that it might just lead to a bad actor being able to take all of your photos from you many of which might have been private with you relying on Apple’s supposedly solid security and privacy reputation only to find that it wasn’t nearly as good as the tech giant was implying it would be.
What’s more is that because of the fact that the hacker would have access to your iCloud, they would have access to your contacts as well. As a result of the fact that this is the case, they would be able to send the exploit they used to access your iCloud to all of your contacts under your name, thereby potentially leading to a really serious outbreak that would result in a lot more people being affected than might have been the case otherwise.
With all of that having been said and out of the way it is important to note that Apple solved most of these issues within a day and some of them got top priority which meant that they were resolved within a few hours. Apple has done a good job of fixing these issues and problems do end up occurring with an operation that is this massive so perhaps the tech giant can be forgiven for this sort of thing all in all at the end of the day. Still, more precautions should be taken to stop such flaws from occurring in the first place.
