Apple temporarily disables the Apple Watch's Walkie-Talkie feature due to a vulnerability that lets it listen in on other iPhones

Apple temporarily won’t allow conversations through the Apple Watch’s Walkie-Talkie feature. A vulnerability was found that lets people listen in on other iPhones without their knowledge. Apple says it isn’t aware of the feature being used and it didn’t detail how it works. But the company said there are “specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it.” The app hasn’t been taken out of Apple Watch devices, but users will not have their calls go through.

This push-to-talk feature was introduced last year with the release of watchOS 5. And this isn’t the first time Apple has had to disable a feature. Back in January, the company had to disable the group calling function because it lets users listen in on devices before a call was picked up. The company was seen to respond slowly to that issue, so it looks like they’re trying to remedy that here. The timing for this is notable as well. Apple just took out Zoom’s web server software from Macs after the video conferencing app was discovered to have a major vulnerability bug.

Source: The Verge