Apple, which seeks to portray itself as the champion of security and privacy, is caught in reverse by the discovery of a flaw to spy on users of FaceTime, its application video calls.
The US digital giant was forced to announce Monday night in the United States that it was suspending FaceTime's "group calling" feature, as long as an iOS mobile operating system update (used including smartphones and tablets of the brand apple) can be distributed to all users.
The reason for this suspension? FaceTime users have discovered that with this feature allowing several people to chat together by video, it was possible to listen to or even film some users without their knowledge.
When a user making a FaceTime call "added" to the discussion, the operating system seemed to deduce by default that it was a conference call and at the same time activated the recipient's microphone even before it do not answer.
Even more disconcerting, if he refused the call, his front camera used to discuss audiovisual was activated, allowing to see the other user at the end of the line.
The problem could be reproduced on Mac, which also lets FaceTime sound much longer than its portable cousin.
Apple has promised a patch "later in the week," but the case falls badly for the US group, which seeks to portray itself as the champion of user safety against Google and its mobile operating system Android competitor.
Especially as, little extra irritation, it occurs at the time of the International Day of Data Protection, an initiative that the boss of Apple Tim Cook had himself to publicly greet in a tweet.
Apple offers less open systems than Google for smartphones. This limits the range of applications available in its online store (App Store), but promises in exchange for better security guarantees to users.
Tim Cook has multiplied statements recently in favor of the protection of personal data, taking the opposite of other giants of the web as Google but also Amazon or Facebook.
He has not hesitated recently in a forum to claim a federal law on privacy, "which should not only aim to give control of its data to the consumer, but also highlight those who sell your data in secret ".
"Let's all insist on the need to take action and reform for the protection of privacy, which is vital," he said on Twitter on Monday.
Put a lid on its speaker
According to some experts, security breaches like the one faced by FaceTime are almost inevitable, or at least extremely difficult to prevent.
"The problem is with applications that are constantly adding more and more complex features," says Gerome Billois, cybersecurity specialist at Wavestone. The more the number of functionalities increases, "and the more likely it is that a strange scenario occurs which nobody had thought".
And it is extremely difficult to detect these flaws, as demonstrated by all methods, sometimes very convoluted, found by users to bypass the access code of Apple smartphones using Siri, the voice assistant.
There is at least one case where apparently children have found the flaw by manipulating the smartphone in a way that no reasonable adult would ever have thought of, says Gerome Billois.
At least, he notes, Apple reacted very quickly once the flaw was demonstrated and exposed on Internet sites.
For the expert, the episode should at least remind all users of smartphones and other tablets that when you have a device with microphone or camera, connected to the Internet, it is probably impossible to guarantee that there will have no improper operation, and therefore the possibility of espionage.
"The software does not allow 100% security," he recalls. "If you want to have a sensitive conversation in a room where there is a connected speaker, the best way to have that 100% security is ... to put a good old cover on it. "
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg himself set the example in 2016, voluntarily or not, by being photographed near a personal computer ... whose camera lens and the microphone were closed by tape.