Apple Disabled watchOS Walkie-Talkie Feature To Prevent Eavesdrop, As It Released A macOS Fix For The Zoom Bug

According to the TechCrunch report, Apple temporarily disabled the Apple Watch Walkie-Talkie feature, as a bug in such feature could allow u...

According to the TechCrunch report, Apple temporarily disabled the Apple Watch Walkie-Talkie feature, as a bug in such feature could allow users to eavesdrop on others. Currently, Apple is developing a fix, and the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch will remain, but it won't function as normal.

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.

On a separate story, the video conferencing software developer Zoom has previously released an emergency patch to fix Mac camera vulnerabilities. Apple is also quietly updating macOS to eliminate those hidden network servers in the Zoom software, as it could leave the camera at risk of being hijacked by hackers.

Zoom has released patches, so Apple doesn't have to update the macOS, but it's safer following the update, even if users use the old version of Zoom to avoid attacks. Zoom also worked with Apple to test the fix. The patch does not affect the normal function, only the user's permission is required to launch the app.