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Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

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Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#31

Post by kstrauser »

ryandrake wrote: post #28

This is nice in that Apple acknowledges that iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices still exist and are used. I wish third party developers would read that memo and get with the program. The App Store is becoming a ghost town of "This app stopped supporting your icky old device" warning messages due to app developers abandoning these phones.

Apps don’t support devices, by and large. They support SDK versions. Targeting a 4 year old SDK means not using a fair chunk of new OS features, which translates to at least some lost sales and developer happiness.

I’m sympathetic with your point, truly, but I also get why devs would aim at newer OSes.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#32

Post by compounding_it »

kstrauser wrote: post #31
ryandrake wrote: post #28

This is nice in that Apple acknowledges that iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices still exist and are used. I wish third party developers would read that memo and get with the program. The App Store is becoming a ghost town of "This app stopped supporting your icky old device" warning messages due to app developers abandoning these phones.

Apps don’t support devices, by and large. They support SDK versions. Targeting a 4 year old SDK means not using a fair chunk of new OS features, which translates to at least some lost sales and developer happiness. I’m sympathetic with your point, truly, but I also get why devs would aim at newer OSes.

And the ‘features’ also involve lot of performance updates that can leverage something like newer metal. Given that a large chunk of the user base uses an iPhone from 1-2 years ago it simply makes sense to use this and abandon old SDK.

This makes me wonder though how Apple seems to deal with this for their core apps.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#33

Post by burnt-resistor »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #29
GeekyBear wrote: post #22

A security update for an eleven year old phone is pretty wild. For comparison, the Nexus 6P was released in the same year as the iPhone 6S. It last received a security update in 2018.

Only 3 years of security updates for a computer we use every day is criminal. It shouldn’t be shocking that Apple kept patching but rather that Google hasn’t.

7 years for hardware and 2 latest OS versions was the standard Apple support timeline, except for many iOS and iPadOS 18 devices to force use of Liquid Glass in 26.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#34

Post by watermelon0 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #11
falkensmaize wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absurdly high markups? They just released a very good laptop for $599. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is $1299. The OnePlus 15 is $999. A Dell XPS 16 with 32gb ram is over $2000. I won’t argue that they charge a premium for memory and nvme, but I have never felt like I overpaid for my MacBooks or iPhones, in part because they last so long.

One anecdotal example doesn't break the pattern. It's a performative ploy.

How about iPhone 16e/17e? Base MacMini M4?

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#35

Post by ryandrake »

kstrauser wrote: post #31
ryandrake wrote: post #28

This is nice in that Apple acknowledges that iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices still exist and are used. I wish third party developers would read that memo and get with the program. The App Store is becoming a ghost town of "This app stopped supporting your icky old device" warning messages due to app developers abandoning these phones.

Apps don’t support devices, by and large. They support SDK versions. Targeting a 4 year old SDK means not using a fair chunk of new OS features, which translates to at least some lost sales and developer happiness. I’m sympathetic with your point, truly, but I also get why devs would aim at newer OSes.

I think you might be confusing two things. iOS developers build against a particular SDK, but they specify a deployment target which is an OS version. You can build against the latest or near-latest SDK (in fact Apple requires you to), while still targeting arbitrarily old OS versions. The developer changes these independently.

Developers can easily use APIs introduced after their deployment target OS. So if you want to target iOS 15, but use APIs introduced in iOS 17, you can easily do this with a runtime check.

Many iOS developers choose to increase their deployment target, which accomplishes nothing for the user besides locking out older devices, while making the developer's life more comfortable (he can abandon those runtime checks and code paths that only run on older devices).

But if you are disciplined and care about your users on old devices, you can very easily target those old devices while still using the latest and greatest OS features on devices that have them.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#36

Post by eviks »

ryandrake wrote: post #28

This is nice in that Apple acknowledges that iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices still exist and are used. I wish third party developers would read that memo and get with the program. The App Store is becoming a ghost town of "This app stopped supporting your icky old device" warning messages due to app developers abandoning these phones.

They got the memo... directly from Apple that drops fully functional phones with their SDK updates, only giving you tiny crumbs of security update once in a while

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#37

Post by throwa356262 »

tech234a wrote: post #18

Notably these exploits were originally patched for newer devices in 2023 and 2024. However, the Coruna exploits are now publicly available because some of the IOC URLs mentioned in Google's recent blog post [1] were found to still be live. Jailbreakers are already repurposing the code to make web-based tools [2]. [1]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/cor... [2]: https://x.com/Little_34306/stat…

So when the exploit was discovered these phones were supposed to still receive security updates? And Apple decided to not patch these because what?

Thanks Google for forcing their hand.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#38

Post by throwa356262 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #22

A security update for an eleven year old phone is pretty wild. For comparison, the Nexus 6P was released in the same year as the iPhone 6S. It last received a security update in 2018.

This is a very odd take.

Apple decided to not patch a couple of iphones and ipads a few years ago. 6s was the oldest one at that time but even that was still within the update window.

The fact that they now have to patch them 3-4 year after the discovery because Google found them to be targeted in the wild should not be presented as a win for Apple.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#39

Post by seam_carver »

ryandrake wrote: post #35
kstrauser wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps don’t support devices, by and large. They support SDK versions. Targeting a 4 year old SDK means not using a fair chunk of new OS features, which translates to at least some lost sales and developer happiness. I’m sympathetic with your point, truly, but I also get why devs would aim at newer OSes.

I think you might be confusing two things. iOS developers build against a particular SDK, but they specify a deployment target which is an OS version. You can build against the latest or near-latest SDK (in fact Apple requires you to), while still targeting arbitrarily old OS versions. The developer changes these independently. Developers can easily use APIs introduced after their deployment target OS. So if you want…

I think I saw a YouTube video where some developer said that Apple requires you to use latest version of Xcode, that version has a minimum SDK (I think iOS 15) and he was complaining he couldn't update his iOS 12 targetting app anymore.

Re: Apple releases iOS 15.8.7 to fix Coruna exploit for iPhone 6S from 2015

#40

Post by kilpikaarna »

kstrauser wrote: post #31
ryandrake wrote: post #28

This is nice in that Apple acknowledges that iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices still exist and are used. I wish third party developers would read that memo and get with the program. The App Store is becoming a ghost town of "This app stopped supporting your icky old device" warning messages due to app developers abandoning these phones.

Apps don’t support devices, by and large. They support SDK versions. Targeting a 4 year old SDK means not using a fair chunk of new OS features, which translates to at least some lost sales and developer happiness. I’m sympathetic with your point, truly, but I also get why devs would aim at newer OSes.

I'd love to know what exciting new features the developers of my bank auth app (also used as semi-mandatory ID in various services) have available to them now that they've let it break on my otherwise adequate phone.
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