Apple are once again in big trouble after saying that all iPhones, iPads and Mac computers are affected by two dangerous bugs.
Earlier today the company announced there are two major flaws in nearly all of their products’ computer chips that have been made in the last decade.
That means pretty much every Apple device you own is vulnerable to hackers.
The bugs, known as Meltdown and Spectre, were first revealed by Google and other security researchers on Wednesday.
In response to these claims, Apple on its website released a statement confirming that the findings were indeed correct.
The company said:
Security researchers have recently uncovered security issues known by two names, Meltdown and Spectre.
These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems.
All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time.
Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store.
The only Apple product that has not been affected is the Apple Watch as it does not contain the flawed processor.
Apple alongside other technology companies have since been racing to try and find a fix for the problems in order to prevent hackers from stealing data.
The company said they have already released ‘mitigations’ against the Meltdown bug in the latest iOS software downloads for all affected products.
Meanwhile an update to their web browser Safari which aims to prevent the Spectre bug from infecting devices will be released ‘in the coming days’.
Before you start bragging about how Android is much better than iPhone I would just stop talking now.
That’s because the microchips affected are made by Intel and ARM and found in all modern computer processing products across the world as the companies deliver to a global market.
That means products by ALL companies are vulnerable to the bugs with Google and Microsoft among other companies releasing statements about the problem.
Microsoft have said that they have already released fixes for many of its products while Google has stated that if users download the latest security updates, they too will be protected.
In a blog post, Google outlined what customers needed to do saying:
This document lists affected Google products and their current status of mitigation against CPU speculative execution attack methods.
The issue has been mitigated in many Google products (or wasn’t an issue in the first place). In some instances users and customers may need to take additional steps to ensure they’re using a protected version of a product, as detailed below.
This list and a product’s status may change as new developments warrant.
Hopefully a simple fix can be achieved before hackers get to the flaw first.
