Apple disables Walkie-Talkie app on potential eavesdropping glitch

Apple has disabled the Apple Watch's Walkie-Talkie app because of a glitch that could allow a user to eavesdrop on someone else's iPhone without their knowledge or consent, the company said on Thursday.

"We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch and have disabled the function as we quickly fix the issue," Apple said in a statement to ABC News. "We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore the functionality as soon as possible."

The company added that there no known reports of the bug being exploited for eavesdropping.

"Although we are not aware of any use of the vulnerability against a customer and specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it, we take the security and privacy of our customers extremely seriously. We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action as this bug could allow someone to listen through another customer’s iPhone without consent,” the company said.

The security flaw was first reported by TechCrunch.

It is the second such eavesdropping bug in the last six months. In February, the company fixed a bug that allowed users to eavesdrop on other iPhone users before a FaceTime chat began.