Apple Guarantees to Repair Lengthy-Ignored Parental Management Bug After Media Highlight

Apple will lastly handle a Safari restriction workaround that has been round for years after the bug was highlighted by The Wall Avenue Journal‘s Joanna Stern. Children who’re restricted from viewing sure web sites with the Display Time characteristic are in a position to paste a string of characters within the handle bar in Safari in an effort to get round parental controls.

In a report on Display Time, Stern says that she was in a position to make use of a string of characters on her son’s iPad, bypassing the restrictions that stop entry to web sites with pornography, violent photos, and extra. She was in a position to get round Display Time on units operating iOS and iPadOS 15, 16, and 17, in addition to macOS Sonoma.

In a press release to Stern, Apple mentioned that it’s conscious of an “situation with an underlying net know-how protocol for builders, which permits a person to bypass net content material restrictions.” A repair is deliberate for “the following software program replace.”

Safety researchers that spoke to Stern mentioned the bug was first reported to Apple in March of 2021, after it was discovered that inputting a string of characters would get round web site restrictions applied by dad and mom and net blacklists on firm units. The hack labored to bypass restrictions on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Apple instructed the researchers that it was not a safety situation, and as an alternative directed them to submit a report utilizing the Suggestions instrument. After the report was submitted, there was no phrase again from Apple. Making an attempt to resubmit the bug to Apple was met with no response.

Apple ignored the difficulty for 3 years till Stern was contacted and publicized the issue. It seems that the workaround was not well-known or broadly exploited, as the 2 safety researchers that found it by no means shared it.

Along with promising a repair, Apple mentioned that it’s dedicated to bettering the method that is used to obtain and escalate bug stories.

Stern’s report highlights a number of different bugs with Display Time, together with points with app limits, Display Time utilization charts, notifications for extra time, and Ask to Purchase. Apple improved Display Time with iOS 17.5, implementing fixes for app and system utilization monitoring, app limits, and time requests, however the firm says there can be extra updates in upcoming software program releases.