iOS 7 Reportedly not Encrypting Email Attachments

Apple's bundled Mail app in the latest versions of iOS 7 fails to encrypt email attachments, leaving them vulnerable to attackers, a security researcher has warned. Security researcher Andreas Kurtz wrote in a blog post that he discovered a few weeks ago that attachments in the Mobile.Mail app in iOS 7.0.4, 7.1, and 7.1.1 were not adequately secured by Apple's data protection mechanisms.

Using an iPhone 4 running the most recent versions of iOS 7, Kurtz wrote that he was able to locate test email attachments without any encryption. He wrote that he was able to reproduce the same results on an iPhone 5s and an iPad 2 running iOS 7.0.4. Kurtz wrote that he was able to access the device's file system using "well-known techniques," including the device firmware upgrade mode, which allows devices to be restored from any state by plugging them into a computer.