Apple Apologizes For FaceTime Bug, Thanks Family For Reporting, Server-side Fix Applied, Feature Will Be Enabled In iOS Update Next Week

Earlier this week, a major FaceTime bug was discovered that let anyone eavesdrop on a FaceTime recipient without their consent. Not only did it allow for audio snooping but also for video spying.

To Apple’s credit, as soon as the bug was made public, the company was very quick to kill the Group FaceTime video calling feature from server-side and then issued a statement that the company will issue an iOS update later in the week to properly fix the problem.

However today Apple has issued the following statement to media as an update on the issue:

“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. 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.

We want to assure our customers that as soon as our engineering team became aware of the details necessary to reproduce the bug, they quickly disabled Group FaceTime and began work on the fix. We are committed to improving the process by which we receive and escalate these reports, in order to get them to the right people as fast as possible. We take the security of our products extremely seriously and we are committed to continuing to earn the trust Apple customers place in us.”

What this likely means is that Apple will release iOS 12.1.4 update next week to patch the bug and re-enable Group FaceTime feature.

It has also been confirmed that Group FaceTime feature will remain disabled for all iOS 12.1-12.1.3 users.

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