Apple has acknowledged the Apple Watch lock issue with iPhone 13 in an official statement on Sunday 26th September. Most likely to be bundled in as a slew of hotfixes in iOS 15.0.1, Apple has advised to turn off the functionality for now by going to Settings > Face ID & Passcode. It looks like users are back to using passcodes and fingerprint scanners for now.
The feature is designed to allow people wearing masks or goggles to unlock iPhones. As Mac Rumours reports:
“affected users might see an “Unable to Communicate with Apple Watch” error message if they try to unlock their iPhone 13 while wearing a face mask, or they might not be able to set up Unlock with Apple Watch.”
iOS 15 Is Full Of Exploits
Habr.com user Illusionofchaos has expressed his concerns with three zero-day exploits that were discovered months ago and exist in iOS 15 currently:
“I want to share my frustrating experience participating in Apple Security Bounty program. I’ve reported four 0-day vulnerabilities this year between March 10 and May 4, as of now three of them are still present in the latest iOS version (15.0) and one was fixed in 14.7, but Apple decided to cover it up and not list it on the security content page. When I confronted them, they apologized, assured me it happened due to a processing issue and promised to list it on the security content page of the next update. There were three releases since then and they broke their promise each time.”
The post goes on to explain how Apple ignored his threats to make the information publicly available and other vulnerabilities mentioned by others. Illusionofchaos goes on to explain, in detail, how each exploit works. Let’s hope this is also included in Apple’s iOS 15.0.1 update.