iPad Left Vulnerable After Record iPhone Patch Job

CWmike writes "With Monday's iOS 4 upgrade, Apple patched a record 65 vulnerabilities in the iPhone, more than half of them critical. However, the first-generation iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the much newer iPad, may have been left vulnerable to some or all of the 65 bugs. iOS 4 cannot be installed on 2007's iPhone and iPod Touch, and the upgrade is not slated to reach iPad owners until this fall. The bug count is a record for the iPhone, surpassing the previous high mark of 46 vulnerabilities patched last summer with iPhone OS 3.0. Formerly known as iPhone OS 4, iOS 4 included 35 bugs, or 54% of the total, that were tagged with the phrase 'arbitrary code execution.' It's unclear how many, if any, of the vulnerabilities affect Apple's iPad. The media tablet runs an interim version of the operating system, dubbed iPhone 3.2, that followed the February iPhone 3.1.3 security update. It's possible that some of the bugs patched Monday were fixed by Apple before it launched the iPad in early April. But according to the Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures database, it's likely that many of the flaws fixed on Monday still exist in 3.2."

Re:holy shit!

[Graff]

Really? So Android has no bugs/exploits in it?

Of course Android has bugs. In fact, it's based on WebKit and so it has many of the SAME bugs that the iOS does because many of these patched bugs are in WebKit.

Like you said, bugs are nearly unavoidable. All you can do is try your best to code well in the first place and then fix them when you find out you still have a few that you missed. They key really is the severity of the bugs, are they so blatant that they make the device unusable or trivial to exploit? Obviously the bugs aren't so bad in iOS because the devices still work well and there isn't any serious malware out there yet.

It's most likely that one of these days there will be a major bug/security flaw. We'll see how Apple handles that but so far their track record is fairly decent.

Another patch that creates a more annoying bug

[GreenSquirrel2]

Upgraded my iPhone to v4 last night, now it doesn't work with my Pioneer (DEH-3200UB) car audio deck. Talked to Pioneer and they pointed to Apple. Spoke with Apple and was told "sorry". Maybe the iPad users are the lucky ones.