If successful, the perpetrator could quietly capture audio and video and eavesdrop on victims. That could be a particularly serious issue when many are relying on webcams for remote meetings and classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Apple fixed the issues relatively quickly after their initial disclosure in December, with patches following in January and March. Pickren noted to Wired that some of the patches touched on "really, really old" bugs in WebKit, though, and they were coming to the forefront because of how hackers might use them in the modern era. In other words, iOS and Mac users may have dodged attacks simply because crooks and creeps weren't looking for these kinds of exploits until relatively recently.