Apple released an emergency patch on Wednesday evening to fix a bug that appeared in the latest operating system update in late July. It said Extended Data Protectioncalled Advanced Data Protection in English, can apparently no longer be activated or deactivated at will with macOS 14.6, iOS 17.6 and iPadOS 17.6.1. It instructs Apple’s servers to encrypt more data end-to-end than what is offered by default.
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macOS 14.6.1, iOS 17.6.1 and iPadOS 17.6.1 address this issue. “This update includes important bug fixes and fixes a bug that prevented Advanced Data Protection from being enabled or disabled,” Apple said in its package insert. How the error occurred is unclear. According to the company, only “a small number of users” were affected. An error message was clearly visible when it was activated, but not when it was deactivated – it looked in the interface as if it was turned off, but extended data protection remained active in iCloud. After installing macOS 14.6.1, iOS 17.6.1 and iPadOS 17.6.1, users will be prompted to check if the deactivation has actually occurred, if necessary.
In addition to its current operating system, Apple has also released macOS 13.6.9, iOS 16.7.10, and iPadOS 16.7.10; these also seem to be mentioned improvements They were also affected by the bug. Additional security-related bug fixes Not included in the update. Extended data protection has already caused difficulties with updates in the past; however, it wasn’t a specific bug like this time.
iOS 18 camera no longer turns off audioWhat Extended Data Protection Can Do
Extended data protection ensures that Apple keeps less data in a form that the company itself can decrypt. These include backups to iCloud, iCloud Drive, photos, and more. Anyone who values ​​their privacy activates the service.
Apple previously received a lot of criticism for having a “duplicate key” for this data, since the company encrypted it on its servers but had the corresponding key. You can read how the system works in the heise+ article.
(B.Sc.)
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