Be careful if you use a Mac, an iPhone or an iPad, even old! Apple has just released updates to macOS, iOS, and iPadOS to fix serious security flaws. Recommending to install them without delay…

Be careful if you use a Mac, an iPhone or an iPad, even old! Apple has just released updates to macOS, iOS, and iPadOS to fix serious security flaws. Recommending to install them without delay…

Contrary to popular belief, Apple products are not immune to security issues. The Apple firm confirms this once again by urgently publishing system updates for its main products, namely the iPhone, iPad and Mac. New versions of IOS, iPadOS and macOS have been deployed in recent days to address recently discovered vulnerabilities. Serious flaws, which would even already be exploited. To the point that Apple recommends installing these updates without delay. And the problem is serious because it concerns both recent models and old devices, released more than seven years ago!

Discovered by security researchers from Google’s Threat Analysis Group and Amnesty International’s Security Lab and referred to as CVE-2023-28206 and CVE-2023-28205, these 0-day flaws are particularly dangerous because they allow the execution of “arbitrary” – and therefore potentially malicious – code with elevated privileges, and therefore able to thwart the security devices integrated into operating systems, including through web pages, as Apple specifies in his alert bulletin.

Apple security: updates for old devices

In practice, many devices are concerned. iOS 16.4.1 and iPadOS 16.4.1 updates, released April 7, 2023, should be installed immediately on newer iPhones and iPads: iPhone 8 and later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air (3^e generation) and later, iPad (5^e generation) and later, iPad mini (5^e generation) and later models. Ditto for Macs running macOS Ventura, which must immediately switch to version 13.3.1 released the same day. But Apple also released security updates for many older devices: iOS 15.7.5 and iPadOS 15.7.5 for iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, iPhone SE (1^time generation), iPad Air 2, iPad mini (4^e generation) and iPod touch (7^e generation), and macOS Big Sur 11.7.6 and macOS Monterey 12.6.5 for Macs not compatible with macOS Ventura. All these versions do not bring any functional novelty: they just correct the security problems mentioned, which seem particularly serious so that Apple insists on the urgency of carrying out the updates.

This is the third time since the beginning of 2023 that the apple firm has thus corrected serious flaws, as evidenced by its list of updates – once in January, another in February. Some updates even affected ten-year-old devices, such as the iPhone 5s (2013), iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus (2014) which were thus entitled to iOS 12.5.7. Proof that Apple does not neglect its old products that are still functional: an approach that should be saluted salute.