Apple Watch’s Walkie Talkie Vulnerability allowed overhearing on other people’s conversations

Apple has deactivated the Walkie Talkie app on the Apple Watch due to a vulnerability that allows eavesdropping on other people’s phone conversations.

The Walkie-Talkie feature debuted last year with the watchOS 5 operating system. It allows you to communicate over voice using a watch, speaking a kind of FaceTime version, and works on all Apple Watch smart watches except the first one.

«We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch and have disabled the function as we quickly fix the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore the functionality as soon as possible», – reports Apple.

According to a press release, Apple learned about the problem through a special portal where security researchers report vulnerabilities. There is no information of about any use vulnerabilities in real attacks. Apple does not report, under what conditions it is possible to exploit the vulnerability.

Another noteworthy fact is that the vulnerability in Walkie-Talkie was announced on the same day as the release of the “silent” macOS update, which removes the Zoom web server with a critical vulnerability.