Apple Issues Latest Update: Fixing its Flagrant Vulnerabilities

Apple had released its security update for Mac OS X Mavericks and the Mountain Lion this Tuesday. The update was meant to fix a major security issue that came to light late last week, patching an embarrassing glitch for the tech giants. This Software Update is featured inside the Apple menu of a Mac and is said to resolve the issue on both Mountain Lion and OS X Mavericks. The flaw was popularly referred to as the “gotofail” bug.

As per the statement posted on the company’s website, the security flaw would have “enabled attackers with a privileged network position to intercept user credentials as well, as other sensitive information” while users were using the Mail, Safari applications and iCloud service. Only Governments with access to telecom carriers have the capability of doing the same.

This also meant that your browser will not be able to verify the authenticity of an encryption certificate, meaning that anyone could easily be pretending to be your doctor’s office site, banks website or even a credit card application form. The bug had stemmed from an Apple code error, causing SSL/TLS encryption to fail, leaving its users vulnerable to hack attacks.

This particular security update for the Apple OS X and Mountain Lion users follows a fix issued for iPhone devices last week, meaning all users of Apple devices now have access to the patch. This Tuesday, Apple had also said that the Mac security update had improved its FaceTime videoconferencing features, and email service.

As per the views of researchers, the security flaw had been in existence for months, but nobody reported this issue publicly. Apple has yet to speak on when and how it found out about the security flaw in the way the Operating system handles sessions, in what is known as transport layer security or a secure socket layer (SSL). There was no official confirmation as to whether the flaw was being exploited or not.