What Is The Problem Affecting All Apple Users?Antivirus

              Problem Affecting All Apple Users

Apple's announcements this week focused on security and privacy, following multiple reports of issues. The company now wants to reaffirm its references in terms of security and privacy and thus stand out from the competition.

However, Apple doesn't always succeed, as evidenced by a safety concern that the brand initially denied, before suddenly confirming it by issuing a corrigendum. However, users are still at risk, as this fix will only be available with iOS 14 in the fall antivirus.

Indeed, last February, security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk revealed that any data copied to an iOS device's clipboard would be accessible to any active application. Additionally, there is no notification or setting to restrict an application's ability to access user information; therefore users have no way of knowing when an application might steal their data.

Worse yet, the researchers said, "The universal clipboard can also be affected by this ability to access what users copy." This means that if you copy something to your Mac, that content can be read by an app on your iPhone. This problem is much more serious, as we tend to use copy and paste more on a computer than on a phone. They added, "We get so many questions on this point that we made a video that illustrates how an app on an iPhone or iPad can access data stored on a Mac's clipboard."

 

Afterwards, the researchers explained, "The problem was reported to Apple last January and after analyzing it, the company said it was in no way a failure." This statement shows that the company believed their clipboard was working as expected and that there was no problem to fix.

Also, the researchers released a follow-up report to demonstrate how apps such as TikTok (which raised many security concerns) gain access to clipboard content whenever they're opened. And while we can't say for sure what the TikTok app does with the data it has access to, it is clearly a threat. For its part, TikTok told Forbes that this was an issue with Google Ads and that it was being resolved. That said, Apple could have avoided this problem in the first place.

 

The researchers were very clear from their first statement. Indeed, Apple should include a privacy setting, application by application, whether or not to allow access to the clipboard. In addition, the company should at least display a notification on the screen when an application accesses the clipboard to prevent them from exploiting the data of the clipboard with impunity.

In addition, although the company does not consider this problem to be such, it is serious enough that a specific fix is   made on iOS 14. On this point, Tommy Mysk said: “Even though Apple has stated that it is not 'was not a problem, I think the company reconsidered its initial thoughts. Indeed, she solved the problem exactly the way we recommended in our article ”. The researcher also noted that the notification was different from those normally used by iOS. This difference confirms that Apple specifically designed this notification for clipboard access.

Certainly, this is a very good initiative, because the problem is real and it must be solved. However, it would have been better if Apple had said the same in February and March, when this issue was first raised, rather than appearing to ignore the issue.

Tommy Mysk concluded by saying: “I am very happy that our research has resulted in such a significant change which will certainly further protect user privacy. I would also like to mention that we contacted Apple after finding out about the solution. The response from the company was very swift and positive ”.