Apple Inc. announced on Friday afternoon that a major flaw in their mobile device software could allow hackers to interrupt emails and other communications.

Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor told Economic Times, "It's as bad as you could imagine, that's all I can say".

According to experts, an attacker has access to exchanges between the user and sites like Gmail and Facebook and can also access the user's network such as wireless services offered in public places.

Apple is silent whether the company knows about the flaw or how it learned about it. But a blunt statement was made on its support website: The software, according to a report by Chicago Tribune, "failed to validate the authenticity of the connection."

Apple distributed software patches and updates for the latest versions of iPad 2 and later.

If this flaw is not patched up, a hacker can access a protected site and be able to open and read emails or other data between the user and the site.

Other security researchers have observed the same defect in latest versions of Mac OSX, running Apple laptop and desktop computers. Currently, there is no available patch for that operating system but one is expected soon enough.

Apple has yet to comment about the issue but these reported flaws seem to be challenging the company's existing protocols. Technology experts consider this as an "embarrassing lapse" for a well-established and guarded company such as Apple.

According to Dmitri Alperovich, chief technology officer at the security firm CrowdStrike Inc., the issue is a "fundamental bug in Apple's SSL implementation". Senior engineer at Google, Adam Langley agreed with CrowdStrike that OSX was at risk.

Apple was recently affected by leaked intelligence documents which stated that authorities had 100 per cent success rate in breaking into iPhones.