Apple Releases Critical iOS 16.6 and macOS 13.5 Security Updates

Apple has released iOS 16.6 and macOS 13.5 updates which fix security vulnerabilities affecting the neural engine of Apple’s own processors. These updates also fix issues with the Find My network and there are kernel level patches which could remotely compromise the integrity of an iPhone, iPad or Mac. Apple has also launched updates for watchOS 9.6 and tvOS 16.6 which have important fixes for security flaws. These updates come just about a month before Apple will launch iOS 17, macOS Sonoma and iPadOS 17, which are already in the public beta phase.

The updates are now available for download, which can be accessed by going into the settings menu. Users can click on General > Software Updates > Download & Install. Users should make sure their devices are connected to a charger and wait for the update to download and install.

The neural engine also helps with natural language processing — for example, for live speech-to-text on the keyboard. It also enables on-device machine learning, which means the data is always on the device and not parsed via the cloud.

On the Find My app, there was a flaw that allowed an app to read sensitive location information, which has now been fixed on the iPad, iPhone and Mac. The security patches in macOS 13.5 will now fix an issue that allowed sandboxed processes to bypass security restrictions or allow an app to access user sensitive data via the Voice Memos app.

There were also issues with the Safari browser which were impacting the WebKit engine. Apple, being the custodian of WebKit, has fixed the issues that allow malicious code to be executed or reveal sensitive information when the browser processes web content.

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