Apple is leaving no stone unturned in a bid to crackdown on leaks, but much to the tech giant’s chagrin, iOS 14 details have been doing the rounds online months ahead of its official announcement.
The burning question on everyone’s mind at the moment is how these details find their way on to the web, despite the Cupertino-based tech behemoth’s trying hard to keep them under wraps. It all comes down to someone willing to shell out a lot of money.
According to Motherboard sources, the iOS 14 leak originated from someone purchasing a developer-only iPhone 11 in China for a tidy sum of money. While the software version dates back to December, someone put in a lot of effort to extract it and then distribute it to hackers, as well as researchers since February. Apple remained mum about this theory.
It remains to be seen whether or not the leak will have any sort of impact on the finished iOS 14 release. Moreover, Apple is highly unlikely to give us even a brief glimpse of the new iOS before WWDC, which kicks off in June. There is also a possibility that the company could have changed features in the past few months.
Likewise, assessing security flaws might also be hard because they might have been fixed by the time the new iOS is launched. Nevertheless, this is still an unusual unveiling of the software, which could help with security assessments but could also spoil the unveiling, while giving hackers more time to discover exploits. The recently leaked code accentuates the problems Apple faces when attempting to restrict leaks. Just like other companies, Apple’s product development process involves depending on a large chain of suppliers and various other partners and it takes only one person to disclose secrets. While Apple is likely to take concrete steps in a bid to minimize leaks, it seems difficult to completely avoid such breaches even in the future.
