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iPhone 5 or earlier Specter and Meltdown patches?

PracticalMac

PracticalMac

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 22, 2009
2,857
5,243
Houston, TX
I wonder if Apple will release patches for Specter and Meltdown (I think it is just Specter that is needed)?

My family currently uses:
3GS
4 (2x)
5s (2x)

And iPad
2
3


Seriously, even the 3GS is used daily, still with original battery!)
 
Last edited:
Most of these products are already EOL. Not likely to happen.
 
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The 5s can be updated to iOS 11 which has some protection against Meltdown and Spectre.

I wouldn’t update your 5s’s to iOS 11 though. Performance is worse than on iOS 10.

I was lucky to downgrade my 5s to 10.2.
 
The bug affects every single iPhone model. Apple isn't about to update the entire lineup.
 
blairian89 said:
Hell no. Why would they? Those devices are practically museum pieces by technological standards...
Click to expand...

simply because there will be millions of iPhone's vulnerable to being compromised, and possibly taken over as a bot for nefarious purposes.

Unlike Android, iOS is very predictable. Once someone finds a ways to take advantage of Specter to take control of device it could be rapidly deployed on those millions of iPhone's.
Mirai became the most powerful DoS virus ever, simply directing millions of cheap IoT devices to launch attacks. An iPhone is far more powerful than those devices.

End result is similar to the Battery debacle, not being clear and vocal about what its doing with older equipment end up costing Apple's reputation. Decades earlier as Apple transitioned to PPC is made a promise that some older 68K Macs would have an upgrade path. Those upgrades were months later and very expensive, a law suite over this was lost by Apple and cost the company so much it would have been cheaper to give the plaintiffs new PPC computers.
(I know, not entirely comparable)

Tie up/repair loose ends, or things start to unravel.
 
PracticalMac said:
simply because there will be millions of iPhone's vulnerable to being compromised, and possibly taken over as a bot for nefarious purposes.

Unlike Android, iOS is very predictable. Once someone finds a ways to take advantage of Specter to take control of device it could be rapidly deployed on those millions of iPhone's.
Mirai became the most powerful DoS virus ever, simply directing millions of cheap IoT devices to launch attacks. An iPhone is far more powerful than those devices.
Click to expand...

I don't see how Android is less "predictable" than iOS. Software bugs like Stagefright affected nearly all versions of Android.

Hardware bugs like Spectre and Meltdown carry through all older versions of Android and iOS. ARM processors more than a decade old are affected.

Just as there are Android 4.0 users, there are iOS 5.0 users.

PracticalMac said:
End result is similar to the Battery debacle, not being clear and vocal about what its doing with older equipment end up costing Apple's reputation. Decades earlier as Apple transitioned to PPC is made a promise that some older 68K Macs would have an upgrade path. Those upgrades were months later and very expensive, a law suite over this was lost by Apple and cost the company so much it would have been cheaper to give the plaintiffs new PPC computers.
(I know, not entirely comparable)

Tie up/repair loose ends, or things start to unravel.
Click to expand...

Apple could come out and say they no longer support iPhone 5 and recommends migrating to a more current generation iPhone. But given iPhone 5 was discontinued in 2013, does Apple really need to do that?
 
JPack said:
Apple could come out and say they no longer support iPhone 5 and recommends migrating to a more current generation iPhone. But given iPhone 5 was discontinued in 2013, does Apple really need to do that?
Click to expand...

Oh, you think that would make everyone run and get a new iPhone?

What about all those companies that make a business reselling older iPhone's, including those obsolete?

aint going to happen.
 
posguy99 said:
Someone else's business model isn't Apple's problem.
Click to expand...

So how will Apple make sure it does not leave open back doors in old devices that could open into new ones?
Future security vulnerability are no long limited to the recent devices, everything is closely connected today.
 
PracticalMac said:
So how will Apple make sure it does not leave open back doors in old devices that could open into new ones?
Future security vulnerability are no long limited to the recent devices, everything is closely connected today.
Click to expand...

Apple won't. They never made that commitment.
 
PracticalMac said:
I wonder if Apple will release patches for Specter and Meltdown (I think it is just Specter that is needed)?

My family currently uses:
3GS
4 (2x)
5s (2x)

And iPad
2
3


Seriously, even the 3GS is used daily, still with original battery!)
Click to expand...
There's no point. There are tons of security vulnerabilities in these old versions of iOS that Apple literally publishes to their website. Spectre is far from the only security concern.
 
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