Govt Agency Issues Warning Against Apple Devices: Your MacBook, Apple Watch, Apple TVs Can Be Hacked!

Security researchers have found two serious vulnerabilities in Apple Watch, TV or Mac products that could enable hackers to take control of your devices and use them for nefarious purposes.

CERT-In First Advisory

Basically, these products are wildly popular across the world, not just because of their features but also because Apple gadgets are regarded as status symbols.

For instance, there is a sharp rise in the smartwatch business in India, as the number of increasingly fitness-conscious Indians goes up by the second, and crores of Indians use Apple watches. 

Besides this, the tech giant’s Mac systems and TVs, too, are also  massively sought after.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued two advisories on Thursday and Friday.

In these advisories, the Central cyber security agency for India, has warned about serious vulnerabilities in all these three products.

Further, CERT-In warned of multiple vulnerabilities in the Mac operating system In Thursday’s advisory.

The vulnerabilities were classified as ‘critical’, it is alarming as this is the most serious rating in cyber security parlance.

The advisory mentions, “Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in the Apple Mac OS which could be exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, bypass security restrictions and cause denial of service conditions on the targeted system,”.

Here ‘Execution of arbitrary code’ informes that a hacker could run any commands or code of their choice on a target device after gaining control of the device using the vulnerability.

So in simple words, a hacker would take over the vulnerable device and make it do anything they want.

CERT-In Second Advisory

The CERT-In also warned of a vulnerability that affects all the three products in its  second advisory issued on Thursday.

Similar to the first one, this vulnerability also lets a hacker execute arbitrary code on the hacked devices. 

Here, it gets more critical, as considering the sheer number of Apple watches, TVs and Macs in use currently, a hacker could have millions of devices at their disposal.

What Is The Solution?

No need to panic there as Apple has already released patches for both the vulnerabilities.

These patches can be installed by downloading the latest updates to the products. 

But the situation gets danse if the vulnerabilities might have already been exploited by hackers according to Apple’s own admission.

Confirming the news, Apple said, “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited,” in a statement on its official website.

These two vulnerabilities were reported to Apple by private cyber security researchers who wished to remain anonymous.