The EU is set to decide within weeks if Apple Maps and Ads now qualify for more stringent antitrust remedial measures under the bloc's expansive Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Concurrently, a security researcher believes Apple's Podcasts app might be ripe for enabling malicious vectors.
The EU to decide within 45 days if Apple Maps and Ads qualify for a "gateway" designation
Do note that the EU's "gatekeeper" designation applies to entities that possess enough market dominance and heft to block competition.
The designation requires an expansive qualifying criteria:
- A market capitalization of 75 billion euros ($79 billion) or EU-derived revenues of at least 7.5 billion euros in each of the last 3 business years.
- 45 million monthly active end users and over 10,000 yearly active business users in the last financial year.
- The candidate entity fulfilled the second criterion in each of the last 3 financial years.
Critically, an entity must inform the EU as soon as it meets the qualifying criteria for a "gatekeeper" designation.
Accordingly, as per a report from Reuters, Apple has informed the EU that it its Maps and Ads services have hit the required threshold for a formal determination.
The EU now has 45 days to decide whether to impose additional antitrust remedial measures on these two services. If the designation status is approved, Apple will have 6 months to take appropriate antitrust remedial measures. Do note that the EU has already bestowed a gatekeeper status on Apple's App Store, iOS, and iPadOS.
Of course, Apple continues to maintain that its Maps and Ads services should be exempt from a "gatekeeper" designation, especially as these two services do not represent a large market share and continue to contend with hefty competition.
The Apple Podcasts app is seemingly ripe for malicious actors
Separately, 404media's Joseph Cox has identified potentially serious security lacunae within the Apple Podcasts app.
"Over the last several months, I’ve found both the iOS and Mac versions of the Podcasts app will open religion, spirituality, and education podcasts with no apparent rhyme or reason."
According to Cox, "at least one of the podcast pages in the app includes a link to a potentially malicious website."
Bizarrely, these seemingly random podcasts include strange titles, replete with code fragments, URLs, and, in some cases, attempts at cross-site scripting attacks.
And, before you start blaming the writer's personal device, a security researcher was able to replicate the same behavior, "albeit via a website: simply visiting a website is enough to trigger Podcasts to open (and a load a podcast of the attacker’s choosing), and unlike other external app launches on macOS (e.g. Zoom), no prompt or user approval is required."
Of course, Cox takes pains to note that this is "not an attack," per se, but that "it does create a very effective delivery mechanism if (and yes, big if) a vulnerability exists in the Podcasts app."
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