Alert! Apple's AirDrop comes with a security flaw that can cause data breach of 1.5 billion users

The much-touted launch of AirDrop at the Apple event garnered eyeballs due to its interesting features. However, it has now been reported that AirDrop has a security flaw which eventually lets people access the personal data such as email address and phone number. 

This could potentially lead to a data breach of over 1.5 billion Apple users and can further cause security issues. 

According to a report, quoting researchers from Germany’s Technische Universitat Darmstadt, it has been revealed that any person can access Apple users’ email addresses and mobile numbers, despite being a stranger and it is done by just sharing pane on the device after the sharing process is initiated. 

The basic requirement to perform this is a stable Wi-Fi connection and the proximity between the two Apple devices.

Primarily, there are two reasons behind this security flaw. First and foremost is the process of finding contact and the next is AirDrop uses a “mutual authentication” process to draw a comparison between the phone numbers and email addresses of a possible receiver.

Besides that, a weak hashing system of Apple further allows hackers to access personal details.

Apple has been notified by the researchers about the security flaw and a possible solution has been found out which is called PrivateDrop which is based on optimized cryptographic private set intersection protocols and allows for the secure transfer of files between users without any flaws. 

 

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