"Open sesame" - The Apple threat that's easily fixed.

In today's technological world words like 'hack', 'virus', and 'malware' have become commonplace and whilst to a lot of people they remain a mainstay of fiction in blockbuster movies they remain a 'clear and present danger' (see what I did there?)

If you're at all tech minded you would of woken up yesterday to news that a particularly nasty hack had been found that directly affected Apple iPhones and iPads. In plain speaking terms, the virus was able to gain access to your camera, your saved passwords, record audio and even track the device.

Nasty stuff I'm sure you will agree.

What was particularly interesting about this was that unlike other viruses that require you to do some of the legwork for them - often needing to masquerade as a helpful tool or integral process - this virus only needed one click to successfully 'jailbreak' the recipients phone.

Now the good news, if it can be classed as that, lies in the fact that the likes of you and me are likely to be unaffected. Why? Because we're not important enough.

What has emerged since the revelation of this 'Pegasus' malware is that it was designed and sold for a !six figure sum! to certain governments, regimes and other clandestine organisations to track and monitor 'people of interest'. Now this opens up a huge can of worms - one that we're not going to get into right now - but it is safe to say that luckily, this is a rare feat.

What should I do?

Now, despite the fact that it is a major hack there is an incredibly easy solution to all this. Update!
Within three days of this issue being reported to Apple they had fixed the vulnerabilities and issued their latest update (9.3.5) to stitch those holes back together again.

So if your iPhone or iPad is still running 9.3.4 then we would advise you run this update as soon as possible just to be on the safe side. It will take around 3-5 minutes to download and install as it is a minor fix.

As always, if you have any questions at all, please feel free to get in touch directly at: support@mavenconsultancy.com after all, IT should work for you, not against you!