Apple rushes out iOS patch for wi-fi vulnerability

Apple has released an urgent update to its iOS mobile operating system, just days after it distributed a new iOS 10.3 version to iPhone and iPad users around the world.

The update, iOS 10.3.1, takes care of a single vulnerability that could allow attackers to run arbitrary code on the wi-fi chip built into iPhone 5, iPad 4th generation and iPod Touch 6th generation and later devices, Apple said.

Attackers who are in range of vulnerable devices could run code on the devices by exploiting a stack buffer overflow in iOS. 

Apple has now addressed the vulnerability, which was found by researcher Gal Beniamini from Google's Project Zero team, by improving data input validation.

The company released iOS 10.3 on March 28 this year. The update contained patches for 70 vulnerabilities, 18 of which could be exploited for remote code execution. 

Apple last week released a public beta of iOS 10.3.2 for users to test.