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Apple knew about the FaceTime eavesdropping bug already a week ago

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Recently a post went viral on 9to5mac about a FaceTime breach which allowed you to listen and see the person you were calling without them knowing or accepting the call.  But this post is not about the bug itself, it’s about Apple’s response.

On 19th January Michele Thompson’s 14 year old son made this discovery and a day later his mom tried reporting the bug to Apple. She sent a video, emailed, faxed them, made posts about it on Facebook and Twitter, but to no avail. Apple decided to disable Group FaceTime calls after more than a week after the report made by Michele T, on Monday 28th of January. They announced to have it fixed later this week.

The bug is now branded as FacePalm and got pretty popular so beware what you say when someone calls you. On top of that, a lawsuit have been filed towards Apple by a Houston Texas-Based Lawyer who claims that the exploit enabled an unknown entity to eavesdrop on his private conversation with a client.

This puts Apple in a pretty bad light, since they are pretty good at boasting how secure their products are and how they care about their customers. During the CES 2019 Conference Apple put up a poster which said:

Whatever happens in you iPhone, stays in your iPhone.

If an exploit like that went through testing and got released it makes me wonder how many more infectious bugs can be out there to discover and used for a wrong cause.

sources:

https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/apple-knew-about-facetime-eavesdrop-issue-since-last-week-faces-a-lawsuit-because-of-the-bug/articleshow/67773411.cms

https://www.nytim es.com/2019/01/29/technology/facetime-glitch-apple.html?ref=oembed

https://9to5 mac.com/2019/01/29/apple-facetime-eavesdropping-lawsuit/

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