Whether Apple agrees or not, its email app vulnerabilities definitely exist and are causing some major harm to companies and individuals. Recently, ZecOPs, a cybersecurity company, disclosed that Apple email app on devices from iOS 6 to iOS 13.4.5 contains two dangerous vulnerabilities that could pose a serious threat to users. Supposedly, these vulnerabilities have affected several professionals and regular users. Among the professionals, numerous people under a company and some other individual belonging to the journalism profession were influenced. Although the company didn’t admit to any dangerous threat inflicted by the vulnerabilities but has formulated a beta version of the app without the susceptibilities, however, it is not entirely usable by the general consumer and can mostly be accessed by developers.
The Apple devices’ email app has been found with not just one but two vulnerabilities that put the information at risk of being leaked or transformed. According to the detailed report of the cybersecurity company, the two vulnerabilities allow hackers to get sensitive information from a device by sending in viruses. And the first vulnerability is that the hacker can send in an email containing a virus to an Apple device user and sometimes even without opening the mail it could consume a significant amount of memory in the device. It engulfs an enormous amount of data that can include all types of sensitive emails to be hacked by the app.
Proceeding, the second susceptibility has been said to allow device take over or code execution by a hacker but has unclear evidence of being inflicted to any Apple device.
The iOS has changed after its initial release, but Apple tried hard and is successful in retaining company values that the Apple devices get their fame and praise from above all else. Apple is the bearer of the iOS that mostly runs on its devices except a few, and when it comes to the security that the operating system provides, nothing can beat it. IOS has a strict mode where there are no jailbreakers, and the system can’t be modified, which is for the best of users as hackers aren’t able to alter or leak a thing from a device in most of their attempts.
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With all this hard work on security and retaining the quality of the products, Apple still failed to deliver a vulnerability free mail app that could put users’ emails to the danger of leak and alteration. And according to the researchers, this flaw has been exploited way back since the time of iOS 6. This shows that even big companies can have flaws when they don’t test out products right before releasing for the uninformed public to use them conventionally. But with the help of responsible cybersecurity companies like one mention above another called Cybri, app and softwares could be provided risk-free to rid doubt and bring to the market a usable product, not one that can ruin an established brand image.
And as far as the safety from Apple email app vulnerabilities is concerned, we’d advise the public to use a different app or opt to not sending sensitive mails on the iOS until a functional patch comes forward.
Cyber Security Researcher. Information security specialist, currently working as risk infrastructure specialist & investigator. He is a cyber-security researcher with over 25 years of experience. He has served with the Intelligence Agency as a Senior Intelligence Officer. He has also worked with Google and Citrix in development of cyber security solutions. He has aided the government and many federal agencies in thwarting many cyber crimes. He has been writing for us in his free time since last 5 years.
