Apple’s massive Facetime bug, which “allows for users to eavesdrop on others while a call is still ringing”, was found as early as last week by a 14 year-old kid who was trying to get his friends together for a Fortnite session.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Grant Thompson, from Tucson, was “setting up a FaceTime chat with friends ahead of a ‘Fortnite’ videogame-playing session when he stumbled on the bug”.
It was then that Thompson noticed that he could hear audio from friends who had yet to join the call. Grant quickly told his mother, Michele, and the pair spent a week trying to contact Apple to warn them about the issue.
The WSJ say after some calls and faxes they “eventually traded a few emails” with Apple’s security team, but it wasn’t until reports of the bug blew up on Twitter that the decision was made to disable Group Facetime.
The bug has been an absolute security disaster for Apple, for whom 2019 could have started a whole lot better.