iPad Left Vulnerable After Record iPhone Patch Job

CWmike writes "With Monday's iOS 4 upgrade, Apple patched a record 65 vulnerabilities in the iPhone, more than half of them critical. However, the first-generation iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the much newer iPad, may have been left vulnerable to some or all of the 65 bugs. iOS 4 cannot be installed on 2007's iPhone and iPod Touch, and the upgrade is not slated to reach iPad owners until this fall. The bug count is a record for the iPhone, surpassing the previous high mark of 46 vulnerabilities patched last summer with iPhone OS 3.0. Formerly known as iPhone OS 4, iOS 4 included 35 bugs, or 54% of the total, that were tagged with the phrase 'arbitrary code execution.' It's unclear how many, if any, of the vulnerabilities affect Apple's iPad. The media tablet runs an interim version of the operating system, dubbed iPhone 3.2, that followed the February iPhone 3.1.3 security update. It's possible that some of the bugs patched Monday were fixed by Apple before it launched the iPad in early April. But according to the Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures database, it's likely that many of the flaws fixed on Monday still exist in 3.2."

Comments

Re:It's a phone

[heruvian]

Yes, a phone that you can use to access your bank account on the internet.

Re:It's a phone

[Lundse]

Who cares if it has vulnerabilities. It's a phone.

A phone which is able to broadcast your real-time location.
A phone which has all your mails, all your texts and logs of all your calls, and a few private photoes to boot.
A phone with verified contact information for all your friends, and sellable information on yours and their preferences.
A phone that can call any number, including premium-rated ones owned by shady organizations.

Yeah. Who cares is someone else gains control of that?

Re:They're no bugs in Apple products!

[BarryJacobsen]

I'm more surprised that a phone is subject to so many vulnerabilities. Yet again, it is a pretty sophisticated piece of software. Hence, thanks for fixing the stuff, Apple; better late security than no security.

According to the article, 50 of the bugs are bugs in Webkit (side note: which would mean these bugs are likely present in Android, as Google uses Webkit for their browser, too), so it appears that web browsing is the most sophisticated piece (understandably.)