Not Ready for iOS 27? Here’s Why You Should Install iOS 26.7 Right Away
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While the release of iOS 27 is the big news today, Apple clearly realizes that not everyone is ready to take the plunge yet, as the company also released iOS 26.7 with some important security fixes.
Since Apple left no iPhone behind this year — any iPhone that could run iOS 26 can be updated to iOS 27 — there’s no need to stay behind. However, some people are naturally reticent to jump into a major iOS update, and Apple wants to ensure those folks are covered with the latest security patches, so it’s released iOS 26.7 to tide everyone over.
In fact, Apple is being so easygoing about this right now that folks who are on iOS 26 will see iOS 26.7 offered as the default update — and it’s the one that’s going to get installed automatically if you just sit back and wait a few days. iOS 27 is available, of course, but you’ll have to scroll down and specifically choose that one if you’re ready to make the leap.
To be clear, there don’t appear to be any new features in iOS 26.7 — at least not user-facing ones — but that’s not the least bit surprising as this is nothing more than a maintenance update. If you want to play with the latest new toys, that’s what iOS 27 is for, but if you’re happy that your iPhone is stable and don’t want to rock the boat, then iOS 26.7 will at least make sure you’re protected against the latest threats.
There’s a pretty long list of them, too. Over 80, according to Apple’s Security Release notes, which list them all in more detail. While the good news is that none of them have been exploited yet — as far as Apple knows, anyway — that doesn’t mean they won’t be.
In fact, this is the fundamental problem with security fix releases like this. Until today, it’s quite possible that nobody outside of Apple and the groups of ethical security researchers who discovered these problems knew about them. We couldn’t know that for sure, of course, as the “black hat” hackers don’t exactly advertise the exploits they’ve found. However, it’s fair to say if they didn’t know about all of these before, they most certainly do now.
Apple has just given every malicious hacker out there a menu of exploits they can use against folks who are still running iOS 26.6 or an older release. That’s fair, because Apple has provided the solution in iOS 26.7, but if you choose not to avail yourself of it, then you’re leaving the door open to attack.
These aren’t run-of-the-mill vulnerabilities, either. Many of them are potentially dangerous, including the usual array of kernel vulnerabilities that could allow malicious hackers to delve deep into your iPhone — including a Bluetooth vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to “cause unexpected app termination or arbitrary code execution.”
The update also fixes several critical bugs that allow apps to break out of their sandboxes — the barriers Apple normally puts into place to prevent one app from reading data belonging to another, or — worst yet — the core operating system. Flaws found in the video encoding and file system libraries had left holes that malicious apps could exploit, possibly gaining full core kernel privileges to gain full access to the iPhone.
There’s no word on how difficult these attacks are to wage, but it’s a case where you’re better safe than sorry. It’s understandable that you may not want to go all the way to iOS 27 just yet, but iOS 26.7 should be a relatively harmless update as it changes nothing else, yet it closes a long list of dangerous loopholes.
