The Hysteria Around Apple’s Patching Of Two Vulnerabilities Is Unwarranted

On Wednesday, Apple released updates for iOS and macOS. And on Thursday they released an update for Safari. And if you look at the security information for these iOS, macOS, and Safari updates, they apparently fix two vulnerabilities that may have been exploited by unknown (to us) threat actors.

Cue the hysteria.

CNN for example called this an emergency update. BBC News did the same thing. And so did many other media outlets. All of whom suggesting that their iPhones have been hacked or something similar. That caused my phone to ring off the hook and my inbox to fill up with clients and friends of clients asking me if their iPhone or Mac has been hacked or is under threat.

News flash: You’re perfectly safe if you apply these updates to your iPhone, iPad and Mac. And as a rule, you should always apply updates to your iDevices when they become available.

But why is the media losing their minds over this? I don’t know for sure. But let me be clear about this. This is not new. Apple has fixed vulnerabilities where “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited” in the past. In fact, from memory Apple may have done this three or four times this year. None of those other times have created this level of hysteria. So why is this time so different? Maybe it was a slow news day? Also, I would like to point out that Apple is hyper aggressive about fixing this sort of stuff. Even going to the lengths of suing the NSO Group to stop them from using iOS exploits. That sounds to me like a company who is serious about stopping exploits.

And let me point out that this past week, it came to light that TikTok which is used by millions world wide has an actual key logger in its app which literally logs every keystroke that you type. And nobody, including the media seems freaked out about that.

So, why is there so much hysteria around these Apple updates? No clue. But people need to relax about this. Simply install this and other updates that Apple releases, practice safe computer habits, and move on with your life. Nobody really needs to invest any time in thinking about this.

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