Apple has shut down Group FaceTime after a bug allowed callers to eavesdrop on people before they answered the call. And it appears that Apple knew about the bug at least a week ago.
In the span of about an hour last night, things went from bad to worse for Apple. What started with the report of a seemingly unbelievable bug ended with the disabling of one of the premium features of iOS 12 as Apple scrambled to save face and prevent an epic privacy snafu.
Here’s what happened: After a tip, 9to5Mac exposed a weird FaceTime bug that let callers eavesdrop on the people they were calling, whether or not the person on the other end picked up or was even aware a call was coming in. The process isn’t exactly easy, involving adding your own number to a Group FaceTime call after dialing, but it’s not something out of the realm of inadvertently implementing it either.
Plus, once it was out there, well, it was almost certain to be abused.
At first, Apple merely said they were aware of the bug and would be issuing a fix this week. Being that it was only Monday, that could be as many as five days, an eternity when a nasty bug is out in the wild. About a half hour later, Apple did the right thing: They disabled Group FaceTime via its servers so someone couldn’t test the bug even if they wanted to.
Group FaceTime has a serious bug that lets people spy on you with ease.
That’s the right thing to do. Coming on the heels of a utter refusal to admit that any range of bent iPads are unacceptable, Apple handled the FaceTime bug quickly and efficiently, and fully mitigated any embarrassing stories (other than the bug itself, of course).
