Dan Pražák Last year, Apple gained the attention of basically all domestic and global media, when the largest foreign Apple magazines drew attention to serious security flaw regarding group FaceTime calls. Thanks to it, it was quite easy to eavesdrop on other users without their knowledge. Only later did it become clear that 14-year-old Grant Thompson was the first to discover and report the bug. At the end of last week, Apple decided to visit the young man and promise him a financial reward for the found error.
It could be interest you
Thompson discovered the bug in FaceTime as early as Saturday, January 19. Since then, he has been trying to contact Apple in every possible way so that the Californian company can fix it as quickly as possible. However, he did not get a single answer. Due to his age, he believed that no one at Apple took him seriously. So his mother, Michele Thompson, also reported the error again, who contacted Apple via email, fax, and messages on Facebook and Twitter. However, the company did not respond again for several days. It wasn't until Friday, January 25th that workers contacted the mother and son and informed them that they needed to create a developer account. But no one dealt with the problem itself.
Eventually, Thompson wrote about the issue publicly, tipping off the media. Only subsequent media coverage forced Apple to finally take action. The company immediately disabled Group FaceTime calls on its servers and promised a quick fix via a software update that should roll out to all users this week. Users can also temporarily disable FaceTime directly on their device in Settings.
How to disable FaceTime in iOS:
It was in response to the initial failure to communicate with the Thompson family when reporting the error that Apple decided to visit 14-year-old Grant directly at his home in Tucson, Arizona last week on Friday. An unnamed but reportedly high-ranking Apple representative discussed possible improvements to the bug reporting process with the family. At the same time, Grant was promised a reward as part of the Apple bug bounty program.
Only the most capable people in the field, who look for vulnerabilities in Apple's systems and for reporting and describing them in detail, receive an invitation to the mentioned program. The amount varies depending on how serious the error is. So the question remains how high Granta's reward will actually get. But as his mother stated, any reward will be good for Grant and he will use the money to finance his future college studies.
source: CNBC
