A Bug in FaceTime Allows One To Access Someone's iPhone Camera And Microphone Before They Answered the Call; Apple Temporarily Disables Group FaceTime Feature (thenextweb.com)

Social media sites lit up today with anxious Apple users after a strange glitch in iPhone's FaceTime app became apparent. The issue: It turns out that an iPhone user can call another iPhone user and listen in on -- and access live video feed of -- that person's conversations through the device's microphone and camera -- even if the recipient does not answer the call. In a statement, Apple said it was aware of the bug and was working to release a fix later this week. In the meanwhile, the company has disabled Group calling functionality on FaceTime app. From a report: The issue was so serious that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and even Andrew Cuomo, governor of the state of New York, weighed in and urged their followers to disable FaceTime. [...] That's bad news for a company that's been vocal about privacy and customer data protection lately. The timing couldn't be worse, given that Apple is set to host its earnings call for the October-December quarter of 2018 in just a matter of hours.

Comments

Re:How did this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Likely the app makes all the video and audio connections first, then rings the person if all the connections were successful. This way as soon as you answer you'll get the feeds instead of having to wait a few seconds for all the data to be sent. It sounds like a reasonable design choice, if you ignore the security and data billing concerns, which apparently they did. What a great way to waste someone's data. Constantly call them on FaceTime when you know they won't answer. I bet Apple has made more of these "UX above all else" decisions.

I'm now glad I keep my cameras covered. I don't know why phone cases don't include a manual shutter, even if it's just a silicone flap.