In the meantime, any of the patched exploits are in the wild and may attack your phone.
Rapid Security Responses are small patches that can be deployed, as the name suggests, quickly.
But anRSR is much moreand a bit lessthan a regular software update.
Sabina Iliescu / 500px / Getty Images
One, it’s faster.
And also faster to download because it is smaller.
At around 80MB, the recent RSR was small enough to download over most cellular plans.
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An RSR may or may not require a restart to apply it, but that’s it.
And third, the RSR is safer.
That’s because, unlike a full software update, the RSR can be reversed.
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This will hopefully increase trust in the process.
And the small size of these updates has another benefit.
Sometimes people don’t have enough space left on their phone to download a multi-Gigabyte iOS update.
How Do They Work?
It isread-only and cryptographically signedfrom top to bottom.
But this also means that even Apple cannot modify the installed OS.
Instead, it has to install a whole new OS every time it makes a change.
To facilitate this, some parts of the OS arekept outside of the read-only partof the OS.
This is where the RSRs are applied.
If all goes well, the fix will then be incorporated into the next full OS update.
you could always remove it if something goes wrong.
Shockingly, in 2022,one in five devicesran on an outdated operating system," says Webb.
