Apple mainly addressed the heating problems of the iPhone 15 series with the iOS 17.1 update. Devices that got unexpectedly hot in some popular applications such as Instagram breathed a sigh of relief with this update. However, it was noticed that Apple also fixed a three-year-old WiFi vulnerability.
WiFi vulnerability fixed with iOS 17.1
According to the update notes published by Apple, iOS 17.1; Fixed a bug related to WiFi. This vulnerability targeted the custom Wi-Fi address setting first released in iOS 14. For those who don’t know, the private address is used to mask the MAC address of the iPhone.
This setting, which hides the real MAC address of the device, aims to prevent tracking by malicious people, especially when connecting to public WiFi addresses. However, cybersecurity experts have revealed that it is possible to discover the real MAC address if one knows where to look.
It was discovered that even if the private Wi-Fi address is enabled, iPhones and iPads continue to send data via a specific address. This was enough to decipher the real address to which the data was sent.
Although there was no significant privacy lapse related to the flaw, it did undermine Apple’s purpose. However, with the iOS 17.1 update, Apple quietly fixed this problem. The fix is available for iPhone X S and newer models, as well as iPad models running iPadOS 17.1.
For users using iOS 16, the iOS 16.7.2 update fixes this security vulnerability. It should be noted that older devices running iOS 14 and 15 are vulnerable.
