Apple Says It Will Fix The FaceTime Bug That Allows You To Access Someone's iPhone Camera And Microphone Before They Pick Up (buzzfeednews.com)

Apple said Friday morning that it had a fix for a bug discovered in Apple's video and audio chat service FaceTime this week, which had allowed callers to access the microphone and front-facing video camera of the person they were calling, even if that person hadn't picked up. The security issue is fixed on its servers, the company said, but the iPhone software update to re-enable the feature for users won't be rolled out until next week. From a report: "We have fixed the Group FaceTime security bug on Apple's servers and we will issue a software update to re-enable the feature for users next week," Apple said in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News. "We thank the Thompson family for reporting the bug. We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue. We appreciate everyone's patience as we complete this process."

Comments

Re:Is anyone really that supprised?

[bobbied]

Sure it is a big deal security lapse from Apple.

Oh yea this security lapse is HUGE.. (not). It allows you to listen to the called phone without permission for the time it's ringing, waiting for somebody to pickup the face time call or for it to divert to voice mail, maybe 20 seconds? Big deal... This doesn't seem like a huge risk to my privacy to me. What are you going to do, call me in the middle of the night and recording my snoring? Any other time when my phone in on my person, I'm going to know when somebody tries a face time call.

Even so, Apple IS doing the right thing. Disable the feature with the exploit as soon as possible, get it fixed, tested, and released before re-enabling the feature.