Computer security researcher claims Apple left users open to threats

Notable computer security researcher Kristin Paget, who worked on Apple’s security team before leaving for Tesla in early 2014, has taken to her blog to criticize Apple for fixing more than a dozen security flaws in iOS weeks after patching them in OS X.  iOS 7.1.1, released yesterday, patched multiple WebKit vulnerabilities that were initially fixed in OS X with the release of Safari 7.0.3 on April 1. 

A noted whitehat hacker who spent more than a year on Apple’s security team has dealt her former employer some blistering criticism for fixing critical vulnerabilities in iOS three weeks after they became widely known to blackhats. Kristin Paget, who recently took a security position at a major car manufacturer, took to her private blog Wednesday and catalogued more than a dozen separate security bugs that were patched in Tuesday’s release of iOS 7.1.1. Some of them gave attackers the ability to surreptitiously execute malicious code on iPhones and iPads without requiring much or any interaction from end users. Paget noted that 16 of the vulnerabilities addressed had been fixed three weeks earlier in a separate update for OS X users.