Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), announced last night that all iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and its Macs are affected by the vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre which were initially reported as affecting only Intel processors. Yesterday it was speculated that even the iPhone and iPad would be affected by Meltdown and Specter after it was known that Macs were affected by vulnerabilities, and now Apple has provided all the details.
Apple has officially acknowledged the fact that all its products are affected by Meltdown and Spectre, but stated that there is currently no software that exploits the vulnerabilities. Moreover, the Apple company says that exploiting Meltdown and Specter also involves an application installed in the iPhone, iPad or Mac to extract information, so things are not that simple.
"All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store.”
Apple has integrated patches in iOS 11.2.1 and macOS 10.13.2 to partially solve the Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities, but in the next few days it will release others to solve the rest. This means that iOS 11.2.2 and macOS 10.13.3 should be publicly available for users of Apple products in order to completely solve the problems generated by Meltdown and Spectre.
"Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown. Apple Watch is not affected by Meltdown. In the coming days we plan to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre. We continue to develop and test further mitigations for these issues and will release them in upcoming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.”
ALL iPhones, iPads and Macs are affected by Meltdown and Spectre
Meltdown and Specter were initially presented by the press as difficult to solve and as a problem that will affect all users of computers, mobile phones and tablets. In this idea, the Apple company recognized the fact that after closing the Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities, the performance of the iPhone, iPad and Mac was not affected in a substantial way.
Apple has resolved in iOS and macOS the Meltdown vulnerability, which is the easiest to exploit and is the most dangerous, while the Specter vulnerability is difficult to exploit and will be resolved soon. Apple says that the Specter vulnerability can be exploited via JavaScript in Savari, so it will release updates for iOS and macOS to protect us against it, coming next week.
"Analysis of these techniques revealed that while they are extremely difficult to exploit, even by an app running locally on a Mac or iOS device, they can potentially be exploited in JavaScript running in a web browser. Apple will release an update for Safari on macOS and iOS in the coming days to mitigate these exploit techniques."
Apple reacted much faster than other manufacturers of mobile phones, tablets, or computers, being the first manufacturer to protect its customers against these vulnerabilities. Windows has since yesterday a patch that blocks the possibility of exploiting these vulnerabilities, while Android will wait a little longer until it is available.
