Apple Hacker Alert: Beats Encryption. 'It's As Bad As You Can Imagine'

Due to a major flaw in Apple Inc software for mobile devices, hackers can intercept email and other communications meant to be encrypted and Mac computers are even more vulnerable, according to the company and experts Friday.

“It’s as bad as you could imagine, that’s all I can say,” said Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green.

Using Gmail, Facebook, unsecured netoworks such as at restaurants leave users particularly vulnerable.

If attackers have access to aan individual’s mobile user’s network, such as by sharing the same unsecured wireless service offered by a restaurant, they could see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Gmail and Facebook,” Reuters reports. ”Governments with access to telecom carrier data could do the same.”

(Read: US warns merchants on methods used by Target hackers)

Apple refrained from saying when or how it learned about the flaw and whether the flaw was being exploited. A statement on its support website, however, was blunt: The software “failed to validate the authenticity of the connection.”

Apple released software patches and an update for the current iOS for iPhone 4 versions, for 5th-generation iPod touches, and iPad 2r.  

Without that fix, however, a hacker could impersonate a protected site and sit in the middle as email or financial data goes between the user and the real site, Green said.