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The Walkie-Talkie application was first introduced for the Apple Watch under watchOS 5 last year - it is a popular means of communication among fans. Now the feature has been deactivated by Apple due to a serious security flaw.
Apple completely deactivated the Walkie-Talkie service for Apple Watch in the early hours of the morning. The reason is a previously unknown error that allows strangers to activate the microphone without the user's consent and thus listen in on the user. Apple itself has also commented on the incident. The company was informed of the vulnerability, which subsequently led to the function being deactivated. The app itself remains available on the watches - but users can no longer use the service until the vulnerability has been fixed with an update. The statement says:
"We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on Apple Watch and have disabled the feature as we work to resolve the issue quickly. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore functionality as soon as possible. While we are not aware of any exploitation of the vulnerability against a customer, and its exploitation requires specific conditions and processes, we take the security and privacy of our customers very seriously. We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action because this flaw could allow someone to listen in on another customer's iPhone without consent. We apologize again for this issue and the inconvenience."
The Walkie-Talkie app, released in fall 2018 under watchOS 5, allows users to easily communicate with each other by voice from their wrist using a push-to-talk function. (Image: Apple)
