Apple admits that fix for FaceTime eavesdropping bug has been delayed

Update now coming some time this week

Apple has admitted that its fix for the eavesdropping bug in FaceTime, revealed last week, has been delayed.

The bug enables callers to listen in on conversations before respondents have even picked up a call. While the recipients are alerted to the incoming call, as usual, they have no way of knowing that the caller can hear what they're saying. Furthermore, the bug also transmits video as well if the recipient presses either the power button of the volume-reduction button.

While Apple promised an update within days, it has been forced to backtrack, admitting that the update will take longer to roll-out than anticipated.

The bug had been discovered by a 14-year-old Fortnite player, but the company, initially, didn't respond to his report. Indeed, the company first demanded that he create a developer account in order to file the bug.

In a statement to the specialist website 9to5Mac, it said: "We have fixed the Group FaceTime security bug on Apple's servers and we will issue a software update to re-enable the feature for users next week.

"We thank the Thompson family for reporting the bug. We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue. We appreciate everyone's patience as we complete this process.

"We want to assure our customers that as soon as our engineering team became aware of the details necessary to reproduce the bug, they quickly disabled Group FaceTime and began work on the fix.

"We are committed to improving the process by which we receive and escalate these reports, in order to get them to the right people as fast as possible. We take the security of our products extremely seriously and we are committed to continuing to earn the trust Apple customers place in us."

In the meantime, Apple is also facing the inevitable legal action, in this case from a lawyer who claims it enabled someone to eavesdrop on an ‘intimate' client conversation.