With everything that ’ s gone down in 2016 it ’ s easy to forget Tim Cook ’ s and Apple ’ s battle with the FBI over data encryption laws . Apple took a strong stance though , and other tech giants followed suite leading to a victory of sorts for ( the little guy in ) online privacy . In this era of web exposure , it was a step in the right direction for those who feel our online identities are increasingly vulnerable on the web . All of this stands for little though when a security flaw in your operating system allows carefully encrypted messages to be effectively decrypted offline . That ’ s what happened to Apple with its iOS 9.2 operating system . Though the patches that ensued largely fixed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability the problem , the whole issue has understandably left iOS users with questions . What really happened and are we at immediate risk ? A paper released in March by researchers at John Hopkins University exposed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability weaknesses in Apple ’ s iMessage encryption protocol . It was found Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that a determined hacker could intercept the encrypted messages between two iPhones and reveal the 64-digit key used to decrypt the messages . As iMessage doesn ’ t use a Message Authentication Code ( MAC ) or authenticated encryption scheme , it ’ s possible for the raw encryption stream , or “ ciphertext ” to be tampered with . iMessage instead , uses an ECDSA signature which simulates the functionality . It ’ s still no easy feat exploiting the security flaw detailed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability by the researchers . The attacker would ultimately have to predict or know parts of the message they are decrypting in order to substitute these parts in the ciphertext . Knowing whether the substitution has been successful though , is a whole other process which may only be possible with attachment messages . The full details of the security flaw , and the complex way it can be exploited Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability are detailed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability in the John Hopkins paper . The paper includes the recommendation that , in the long run , “ Apple should replace the entirety of iMessage with a messaging system that has been properly designed and formally verified ” . One thing that should be made clear is that these weaknesses were exposed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability as a result of months of investigation by an expert team of cryptologists . The type of hacker that would take advantage of these weaknesses would undeniably be a sophisticated attacker . That of course doesn ’ t mean that Apple shouldn ’ t take great measures to eradicate this vulnerability in their system . Your messages , though , are not immediately at risk of being decrypted , and much less if you ’ ve installed the patches that came with iOS 9.3 and OS X 10.11.4 ( though they don ’ t completely fix Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability the problem ) . Tellingly , the flaws can ’ t be used to exploit numerous devices at the same time . As already mentioned , the process that was exposed by the John Hopskins paper is incredibly complex and relies on various steps that are by no means easy to complete successfully .