A new Siri bug has been discovered in the latest versions of iOS 11 that allows anyone to have the personal assistant read iPhone owner’s hidden messages when the device is locked.
Users have the option to hide previews for lockscreen notifications, a handy option that is enabled by default on the iPhone X. They can turn them off by going to Settings > Notifications > Previews.
When previews are hidden users can only see sender’s name on the notification alert on the lockscreen, whereas the content of the message is only revealed when the device is unlocked. So in iPhone X’s case iOS will only reveal messages when it has verified user with a facial scan.
With this Siri bug anyone can pick up your iPhone and ask Siri to read the pending messages. The bug only affects third-party messaging applications, so even though Messages app is safe, apps like WhatsApp, Skype and others are vulnerable.
This particular iOS 11 Siri bug seems to be present in iOS 11.2.6 as well as in latest beta of iOS 11.3. Now that this bug has been made public, we hope Apple would fix it in the final versions of iOS 11.3.
