Apple is downplaying the significance of a recent leak related to the iPhone’s bootloader — source code referred to as ‘iBoot’ that loads Apple’s iOS operating system.
Vice Media’s tech publication Motherboard originally reported the news, citing an analyst who described it as the “biggest leak in history.”
In an official statement to CNET, Apple attempted to address concerns related to the leak:
“Old source code from three years ago appears to have been leaked, but by design the security of our products doesn’t depend on the secrecy of our source code. There are many layers of hardware and software protections built into our products, and we always encourage customers to update to the newest software releases to benefit from the latest protections.”
As mentioned in Apple’s statement, it turns out the source code is a few years old and stems from iOS 9, which likely minimizes the typical risk that stems from code like this becoming public.
For what it’s worth, there’s also only a relatively small number of active devices still running iOS 9, amounting to just 10 percent, according to Apple’s latest operating system distribution numbers.
That said, Apple’s bounty program that encourages security researches to discover flaws in the company’s software, rewards boot firmware issues with the highest amount of money, according to a number of reports.
Source: Motherboard, CNET
