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You Can Fix Critical iOS Security Flaw By Jumping To iOS 10

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Apple and security experts are urging iOS users to update to the newly released iOS 9.3.5 as soon as possible. Apple developed the update to address critical security flaws in iOS after exploits were used to compromise iPhones and spy on journalists and dissidents in the wild. Another alternative, however, is to go ahead and make the switch to the iOS 10 beta.

Critical Security Concerns

Apple’s release notes for iOS 9.3.5 describe the three vulnerabilities addressed by the update. The hack discovered in the wild relied on a combination of the three to remotely jailbreak the target iPhone and surreptitiously install spyware to record location data, view the camera, and listen through the microphone—including being able to eavesdrop on WhatsApp and Viber calls and text messages believed to be inherently more secure.

"The rushed announcement of the 9.3.5 patch update by Apple is not that surprising given that smartphones have become the target of hackers as they are now the credit card and personal assistant of everything,” proclaimed Mark Skilton, a security researcher and Professor of Practice in the Information Systems and Management Group at Warwick Business School.

Skilton explained, "There are three lessons to be learned from this attack: Increased complexity of mobile devices where individual system faults may be accepted but when combined become a cascade failure. Second, just having an encrypted app like WhatsApp does not protect your privacy if the operating system it runs on is violated. And thirdly, the need for crowdsourcing testing to keep checking and monitoring cyber threats is critical in today's connected business.”

I think one of the primary lessons here is a lesson that Apple’s Mac OS X customers learned in recent years as well—better security does not mean “invulnerable”, and the perception of better security doesn’t actually prevent hacks and exploits. In other words, iOS is more secure by design than rival mobile operating systems—especially Android—but more secure doesn’t mean that it can’t be attacked.

If you have not yet installed iOS 9.3.5, you should definitely consider it. More importantly, you should always be on your guard and just understand that despite the many ways iOS may seem like “magic”, it can’t just magically protect you against all malware and exploits.

Jump to iOS 10

As an alternative, you could also just skip over iOS 9.3.5 and jump straight to iOS 10. The most recent version—Beta 7—also addresses these vulnerabilities, so the current iOS 10 will protect you as well—with the added bonus that you get an early look at new features in iOS 10.

Apple is expected to officially release iOS 10 in the next few weeks. The new iOS is generally made available within a few days of Apple’s iPhone unveiling events, and the iPhone 7 media event is rumored to be on September 7.

There are a lot of cool new features in iOS 10. In fact, from what I have seen so far this seems like one of the biggest overhauls of iOS so far—and the best one. Some of the updates to Messages are a little silly or frivolous, but that’s just my opinion. Judging by the third-party apps and sets of emojis there’s apparently a market for such things. Raise to wake, the new Notifications screen and widgets, expanded functionality and contextual intelligence for Siri, and voicemail transcribed to text are just a few of the awesome features off the top of my head.

It doesn’t seem like it will have the temporary photos option I asked for. There were fresh rumors this week that Apple is working on a Snapchat like video app to be released in 2017, but that is not the same thing and does not address the same issue as needing a camera mode that takes temporary photos that you don’t want or need to store beyond the moment you take them.

If you’re going to update anyway to address the security issues, you may as well get a jump start on iOS 10. You’ll probably be installing it in a week or three anyway. You can join the Apple Beta Software Program by clicking here.

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