On Monday, a bug was discovered in Apple's popular FaceTime chat app that allowed users to eavesdrop on people they were calling, even if they didn't pick up. On Friday, Apple announced that it had fixed the issue on the Group FaceTime feature and the patch will be released next week.
“We have fixed the Group FaceTime security bug on Apple’s servers and we will issue a software update to re-enable the feature for users next week," the company said in a statement on Friday morning. "We thank the Thompson family for reporting the bug. We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we complete this process."
The bug was first discovered by a teenager who was playing "Fortnite" with his friends online. After 9to5Mac published video of the bug in action Monday, the exploit quickly went viral and forced Apple to disable the Group Chat feature on FaceTime on its servers. A fix for the bug was originally announced for this week.
Apple also sought to reassure customers that the company took users' data and privacy seriously and were working on ways to reduce something like this from happening again.
"We want to assure our customers that as soon as our engineering team became aware of the details necessary to reproduce the bug, they quickly disabled Group FaceTime and began work on the fix," the company's statement added. "We are committed to improving the process by which we receive and escalate these reports, in order to get them to the right people as fast as possible. We take the security of our products extremely seriously and we are committed to continuing to earn the trust Apple customers place in us.”
A lawsuit was filed by a Houston attorney this week after he claimed that the FaceTime exploit allowed someone to eavesdrop on a private discussion he was having with a client.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Letitia James also announced they would conduct an investigation into the bug.
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