Apple warns of security vulnerability in iPhones, iPads, Macs Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:00)
If you have an Apple device, security experts say you should update it as soon as possible. Apple announced it found serious vulnerabilities that could let a malicious hacker take control of your iPhone, iPad or Mac. Dina Demetrius has the latest.

Dina Demetrius: (00:17)
Apple quietly released two security reports on Wednesday, revealing vulnerabilities for iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Speaker 3: (00:24)
This is what we call a zero day vulnerability. When it’s been exploited by hacker before, the company, in this case Apple, have detected it and been able to do something about it.

Dina Demetrius: (00:33)
The company believes the two security flaws are related. One affects the browser engine that powers Safari and other apps. And the second would potentially allow hackers full access to your device.

Speaker 4: (00:45)
Hackers can actually have admin rights to those devices. So that means that they have access to all of the information.

Dina Demetrius: (00:52)
The affected Apple devices include iPhone 6S models and later, iPad fifth generation and later, iPad Air 2, and all iPad Pro models. Mac computers, running the Monterey Operating System, as well as some iPods.

Dina Demetrius: (01:09)
Apple did not say where the vulnerabilities were discovered or by whom, citing only an anonymous researcher. Experts say these security flaws are inevitable when technologies are constantly evolving.

Speaker 3: (01:20)
This is really a function of the fact that they’re innovating, they’re constantly developing. I think what’s important here is that they have made that update available and it seems that they’ve done that really quickly

Dina Demetrius: (01:29)
Affected users are advised to install those updates immediately.

Dina Demetrius: (01:33)
Dina Demetrius, CBS News, Los Angeles.

Speaker 1: (01:37)
From more we want to bring in Samantha Delouya, she’s a senior business news reporter for Business Insider. Samantha, explain to us how this hack works and who’s most at risk.

Samantha Delouya: (01:50)
Yeah, so yesterday as the package said, Apple disclosed a security vulnerability that affects iPad users, iPhone users, Mac computers. It says as hackers can basically take control of the devices and impersonate their owners, whether that be downloading applications on the device or even committing financial crimes potentially. And Apple says that it may have been exploited, but we don’t know anything further than that. Luckily, the fix is to update your devices and Apple says that people should do that as soon as possible.

Speaker 1: (02:29)
If your device has already been breached, what can you do beyond that update?

Samantha Delouya: (02:36)
Sure. So users should freeze their credit. It’s free to freeze your credit and security experts advise that’s a great thing to do. Other than that, contact the authorities respectively if you believe that a crime has been committed under your name. And then ways to avoid getting into the situation in the first place aside from updating your phone is get a password manager. Cybersecurity experts say that hackers know that we all use the same password across devices, and they exploit that. So change your password for every login and get a password manager so you can keep track of it. Change those passwords often so hackers can’t keep track of you. That’s the best way to do it. I would say also, if you believe that a financial crime has been committed against you to freeze your credit, like I said earlier.

Speaker 1: (03:31)
Right. Yeah. And finally, there’s a new issue with TikTok. Researchers discovered that the app is key logging its users information through the app browser. What’s what’s going on there and what’s the risk to users?

Samantha Delouya: (03:45)
Sure. So researchers are actually blaming Apple for this saying that Apple shouldn’t have let TikTok into their app store with this piece of code in the first place. But basically this code that a researcher published in his blog that he found shows that TikTok can monitor any keystroke done within the app. So whether you click a link within TikTok and it takes you to a third party website, even like Amazon, and you enter your credit card information or passwords, TikTok can potentially see that. Now TikTok says they don’t use this data and they don’t do anything with it, it’s for anti-spam purposes. But researchers say that this shouldn’t be allowed in the first place, just in case TikTok decides to do something with it one day.

Speaker 1: (04:35)
Samantha Delouya, thank you very much.

Samantha Delouya: (04:39)
Thank you.