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Walkie-Talkie on the Apple Watch has been disabled because Apple found a vulnerability

By Kenny Yeo - on 12 Jul 2019, 11:08am

Walkie-Talkie on the Apple Watch has been disabled because Apple found a vulnerability

(Image source: Apple)

Apple has just disabled the Walkie-Talkie app on Apple Watches because it has discovered an unspecified vulnerability that could let users listen in on other iPhones.

Apple didn't disclose how this vulnerability works and only said that "specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it."

Walkie-Talkie was introduced with watchOS 5 last year. It lets users send voice messager in real-time over Wi-Fi or cellular.

This is the statement from Apple:

We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch and have disabled the function as we quickly fix the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore the functionality as soon as possible. Although we are not aware of any use of the vulnerability against a customer and specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it, we take the security and privacy of our customers extremely seriously. We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action as this bug could allow someone to listen through another customer’s iPhone without consent.  We apologize again for this issue and the inconvenience.

According to reports, the bug was brought to Apple's attention through its report a vulnerability portal. There's also no evidence that it has been exploited in the wild.

For now, Apple is temporarily disabling the Walkie-Talkie feature until it can find a fix.

Source: Techcrunch

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