This article is more than 1 year old

Don't make an iOS of yourself – Apple's patched its OSes, you know the drill

Cupertino also added a Digital Legacy – special IDs so your loved ones can get your data once you're dead

Apple has updated its operating systems for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch and TV boxen, correcting dozens of security issues along the way.

Full details of Apple's bugs aren't available at the time of writing, but plenty of them sound more than worthy of rapid remediation.

CVE-2021-30986, for example, means a device running macOS Monterey "may be passively tracked by its Bluetooth MAC address". That is not good.

CVE-2021-30957 and 30958 describe flaws that mean processing a maliciously crafted audio or image file can lead to arbitrary code execution. The two flaws are present in macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and even WatchOS.

CVE-2021-30960, present on all Apple platforms, means "Parsing a maliciously crafted audio file may lead to disclosure of user information."

Yes: your smartwatch can leak user information if it plays a poisoned song. Your music choices may say a lot about you, but they shouldn't say that much.

On macOS alone, 14 fixes address the potential for malicious applications to do nasty things.

A whopping 21 flaws in iOS and iPadOS allow arbitrary code execution.

We could go on, but you get the idea: installing these updates is a very sensible idea.

There's an upside to the latest Apple OS releases, too.

iOS 15.2 adds information on apps' use of permission-restricted resources including your microphone and camera. The keypress to make an SOS call has been simplified (but also overlaps with the screenshot keypress).

Apple's "Digital Legacy" feature also debuts in this release and lets iThing owners designate someone who can access their data after they die.

Digital Legacy also applies to macOS, which in Monterey 12.1 gains better media sharing features.

Details of Apple's updates can be found here. Apple devices usually nag their owners to install updates and offer passable instructions on how to get it done. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like