What do security updates actually do?

Question

I’m on iPhone, and quite often they release a new version of iOS and the release notes just say “security update”.

What exactly do these updates do? Are they a result from attempted cyberattacks? What would happen if they didn’t release these updates?

In: 13

Answer 1

They fix security vulnerabilities in the OS that people found. The updates are intentionally vague because it’s a security risk to say what the security risk is