Email attachments are not secure in iPhone and iPad”

Apple says it offers an additional layer of data protection to the attachments of emails on their mobile devices. As stated in their website for technical assistance, the protection works across all your devices with encryption capability, including all models of iPad and any iPhone 3GS onwards. It protects encryption keys with a password. However, a researcher “Andreas Kurtz” has discovered something else. Kurtz has found that since the release of iOS 7.0.4 to the current version iOS 7.1.1 no attachments of emails are encrypted. This is especially serious for those professional users who handle sensitive data of their businesses and companies.

The researcher has verified the security breach iOS 7 on three different devices: iPhone 5S, iPad 2 (both with iOS 7.0.4) and an iPhone 4 updated to version 7.1 and 7.1.1. This has created an IMAP email account and placed several e-mail messages with attachments folders. Kurtz could access the attachments without having to pass the encryption keys, and view the contents of the files, just a data partition mounted on iOS. The problem exists in the e-mail accounts created with other protocols such as POP or ActiveSync.

Shortly after discovering the fault, Andreas Kurtz communicated it to Apple to fix it. The company replied that they were aware of the issue, without mentioning any date on the availability of the patch. However, as Kurtz notes, unfortunately, the latest iOS version 7.1.1 has not remedied the problem, and users of iPhone and iPad should be alert about the risk of data theft.

Of course, keep in mind that in order to access the contents of the attachments is necessary to have the device on hand. It can not be done remotely, limiting the risks. Also need to know the password of the iPhone or iPad, or jailbreak device. Anyway, if the device is lost or stolen, the attachment would be unprotected and sensitive information would be accessible to data thieves.

Apple has neither patched this failure safety of the iOS operating system, nor has announced when it plans to fix it. On Monday, in a statement to cultofmac, Cupertino explain that “Apple knows the issue and are working on a patch to be distributed in a future software update. ”

It seems that Apple is more concerned about the safety of Mac users in comparison to mobile devices. At least that is what emerges from the comparison of the list of patches released updates for OS X compared to iOS.