Preface: According to Apple’s security update documentation, these two critical zero-day vulnerabilities, CVE-2025-43529 and CVE-2025-14174, were officially patched in iOS 26.2 released on December 15, 2025. CVE-2025-46285 is also typically a security patch included with iOS 26.2.
Upgrading to 26.2.1 will indeed ensure your iPhone is protected against the aforementioned CVE vulnerabilities, but these protections were already in place in version 26.2. If you are already on 26.2.1, the current system is the most secure official release as of today (February 6, 2026).
Focus: There are many services available that can easily provide facial recognition capabilities, including Amazon Rekognition, OpenCV, and Microsoft Azure.
Apple uses its own internal frameworks like Core ML and Vision to perform on-device machine learning and image analysis. With the help of Core ML, facial recognition is definitely possible using the Vision framework, although that requires integrating a previously trained model into your app.
Although iOS 26.2.1 was intended to fix bugs, some users encountered the following problems after updating:
- Issues with Face ID in iOS 26.2.1: Face ID is unresponsive when unlocking or entering third-party apps (such as banking apps).
- Some users have reported that after the update, apps that previously supported Face ID login no longer display the facial recognition window.
- Reports indicate that iOS 26.2.1 may have a storage space reporting error, indirectly causing instability in system components such as Face ID.
Summary: the Face ID fixes in iOS 26.2.1 are more focused on underlying system stability (such as updates to the Secure Enclave feature and adjustments to the audio/camera pipeline) rather than errors in the Core ML integration logic. If you encounter a situation where the Vision framework cannot recognize faces while developing your application, you usually need to check the model’s VNRequest configuration.
Although not weekly or mandated:
Apple performs:
- Static code scanning
- Behavioral analysis on device
- Privacy API usage scanning
- Analysis of network calls
Make sure:
✔ No private API usage
✔ No runtime permission circumvention
✔ No silent data upload