Urgent warning to iPhone owners over bug that could leak all your passwords – check your settings now
AN urgent warning has been issued to iPhone owners over a bug that could leak all of your passwords.
Apple users are being urged to check their settings and update their devices right away to ensure personal data isn’t at risk of being accessed.
If you’ve recently installed iOS 18 you might have spotted an app automatically downloaded to your home screen called ‘Passwords’.
It allows all the logins and passwords, that you’ve ever asked your phone to remember, to be stored in one place.
And while that seems like a handy tool to have, a glitch in the system was discovered soon after its launch.
Developer and security researcher Tommy Mysk found the app was using “unencrypted” HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).
HTTP is a set of rules which allows data to be communicated to the internet and is used to load webpages.
The iOS expert expert explained malicious networks can easily intercept and manipulate insecure HTTP.
Meaning, if you allowed the Passwords app to ‘fill’ in your login on a webpage, your details could be compromised.
However, the bug has since been fixed – but iPhone users need to update their devices to ensure their details are secure.
Mysk said this week: “Since iOS 18 launched, the new Passwords app has been using unencrypted HTTP to download icons for password entries – a potential security risk.
“We reported this bug to Apple in September, and it’s finally fixed in iOS 18.2.”
A spokesperson from Apple said of the fix: “This issue was addressed by using HTTPS when sending information over the network.”
The Passwords fix is now available for all devices if they’re upgraded to the latest version – iOS 18.2.