Last week, around Monday to Tuesday, the worldwide Apple community was thrilled with the discovery of a very serious bug that allowed users to hear (or see) others when making a call. FaceTime in group even before she was answered. Apple quickly deactivated the service on its servers, but now, as promised, the definitive fix has finally come.
Already available for iPad, iPhones and iPods touch users iOS 12.1.4 (build 16D57), and Mac users are getting a MacOS Mojave 10.14.3 Supplemental Update (build 18D109), which basically comes in to correct such a security hole. This is exactly why these updates are highly recommended for everyone.
Supporting up to 32 simultaneous participants, Group FaceTime was a new release late last October, with iOS 12.1 and macOS Mojave 10.14.1. We do not know if such a bug has existed since that time, but it has already been reported that Apple had been informed of the problem at least ten days before it made the New York Attorney General open an investigation into the bug and politicians send it to Tim Cook . Apple is also already being sued by a lawyer in Houston, Texas, and a Canadian law firm wants to file a class action lawsuit against it.
Parallel to all this, an unnamed Apple executive personally met the boy's family who discovered the bug to explain how these internal processes work in the company and to inform them that they will be duly paid for the discovery.
Update 02/07/2019 s 16:15
Here are the direct download links for iOS 12.1.4:
Update II 02/07/2019 s 16:18
The Apple Status page has already been updated informing FaceTime group reactivation, obviously only for those running iOS 12.1.4 and the latest macOS Mojave 10.14.3 (or later) build.
Update III 2/7/2019 6:44 PM
Apple has released iOS 12.1.4 security fixes and confirmed to TechCrunch update also fixes an undisclosed vulnerability regarding Live Photos on FaceTime.
Today's software update fixes the security bug in Group FaceTime. We again apologize to our consumers and thank them for their patience. In addition to correcting the reported bug, our team conducted a thorough security audit of the FaceTime service and made additional updates to both the FaceTime app and the server to improve security. This includes a previously unidentified vulnerability in the feature of Live Photos from FaceTime. To protect consumers who have not yet updated to the latest software, we have blocked the Live Photos FaceTime on our servers for previous versions of iOS and macOS.
This is another good reason for everyone to update immediately.
Update IV 2/7/2019 7:55 PM
Anyone who wants it can also manually download the macOS Mojave 10.14.3 Supplemental Update.
