Apple has released a security update that includes fixes for more than 100 flaws in the operating system, including a vulnerability in Apple Pay that can allow for hackers to steal the confidential information of their victims.
The security issue would have allowed hackers to trace the recent transactions that users made through Apple's mobile payment system. All the information regarding the transactions could be obtained by hackers through the log feature of the platform.
According to Apple's support page regarding the security update, certain cards could allow terminals to acquire the recent transaction information of a user upon making a purchase. The transaction log was activated in some configurations, but with the update, the functionality has been entirely removed.
Apple Pay users will no longer have to worry about hackers abusing the vulnerability to extract their payment information.
In addition to the Apple Pay fix, the iOS 9 security update patched up more than 30 issues that were found in WebKit, which is the engine that is used in the Safari browser. Due to memory corruption issues in WebKit, hackers can lead users to maliciously crafted websites that would launch harmful arbitrary code that will compromise devices.
According to Apple, WebKit was fixed by making improvements on memory handling by the engine.
Apple's Game Center was also fixed in the security update, as a malicious Game Center app could be used by hackers to access the e-mail address of a user. Through the improvement of access restrictions on Game Center, the vulnerability has been addressed.
Previously, users also potentially exposed their AppleID credentials after signing out of the iTunes Store, as the credentials persisted in the keychain afterwards. The problem has now been solved with improvements in the account cleanup process.
In January, Apple confirmed that 75 percent of iOS-powered devices have upgraded to iOS 9, with only 19 percent still on iOS 8 and 7 percent on older versions. iOS 9 was able to reach the milestone in less than four months for an adoption rate faster than the iOS 8, which took six months to achieve the same thing.
The fast adoption rate of the mobile operating system only heightens the importance of Apple's new security update for iOS 9.
