Apple has released iOS 9.1 and nixed a fresh jailbreak from Chinese hacking crew Pangu Team as well as 48 other security bugs.
It took Team Pangu 28 days to find a reliable bug to use as a jailbreak for iOS 9, and it’s taken Apple seven days to shut down the flaws that could have been used to liberate iPhones, iPads and iPods running iOS 9.0 through to 9.0.2.
Apple credits Pangu Team with two bugs in an advisory for iOS 9.1, which include a memory corruption issue in the kernel in which a malicious app could be used to elevate privileges as well as a heap based buffer overflow in the DNS client library.
Of the second bug, Apple said: “A malicious application with the ability to spoof responses from the local configd service may have been able to cause arbitrary code execution in DNS clients.”
iOS owners who are still keen on jailbreaking their devices of course can avoid the update but they would also be deferring 48 other security fixes that Apple has included in iOS 9.1, which address numerous bugs that would be considered critical on the desktop, based on their description.
For example, five separate bugs could give an attacker control over the device simply by its browser visiting a maliciously crafted website. That likely would involve an element of trickery but nonetheless could be harmful if the situation were to arise.
Besides security fixes for Apple mobile devices, Apple has a bunch of fixes for its desktop, server and Windows products.
Apple has released numerous fixes for its latest version of OS X El Capitan with the latest version 10.11.1. The update also includes fixes for Yosemite and Mavericks.
Other fresh updates that include important security fixes include Mac EFI in Mavericks v10.9.5, Safari 9.0.1, watchOS 2.0.1, iTunes 12.3.1 for Windows 7 and later, as well as Xcode 7.1 and OS X Server 5.0.15. Links to information about the updates can be found here.
Want to know more?
Why not become a CSO member and subscribe to CSO's mailing list.