iOS 6.0.1 Calendar Meeting Hijack issue

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Level 1

13 points

iOS 6.0.1 Calendar Meeting Hijack issue

Yesterday we witnessed another calendar meeting hijack situation, which was supposed to be fixed with the iOS 6.0.1 update. We have been able to reproduce the issue at will. Can someone else confirm repoduction in their environment and post back here? Hopefully Apple will correct as soon as possible.

Steps to reproduce.

Ensure your iOS device is on the current iOS 6.0.1 release and that you have an Exchange e-mail account on your iOS device with calendar synching turned on.
Go to Outlook on your PC and create a new meeting. For the attendees, invite a distribution list. For your purposes of testing, obviously pick a small group. This needs to be a distribution list in your Global Address List defined on Exchange, not one in your local Outlook contacts. Fill in the rest of the typical meeting details such as a subject and location. Do NOT expand the distribution list to see the individual names.
Send the meeting invite.
The meeting will show up on the invited persons' iOS calendar, but instead of being tentative since it hasn't been accepted, it shows up as if it is already accepted.
Using an iOS device of a person who was in the distribution list, but not the original meeting owner, tap on the calendar entry.
Tap Edit
Scroll to the bottom and tap Delete.
You will then see in the original meeting owners Outlook inbox two cancellation notices for their own meeting, with the meeting owner listed as the invited person who deleted the entry from their iOS device.

Please post back confirmation.

iPhone 5, iOS 6.0.1

Posted on Nov 15, 2012 2:47 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 15, 2012 11:20 PM in response to Hobbes4Pres

Hello there!

From what we can tell.. we are having this exact issue. Distribution lists, or having a distribution list included amongst other invitees not on a DL are having this issue. If you send to multiple users not on a DL, and don’t include a DL at all, everything works just fine.

Are you on Office365 as well?

Our user had a non-response required invite sent to them, deleted the item from the iPhone, then everyone that was included on the invite got 2 "informational" notices of cancellation from him directly.

We are all hoping this thread picks up steam, as this issue along with the “Hijack/Cancellation iOS 6.0.0 issue” is, and continues to be a major issue in our enterprise.

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Answer 2

Hobbes4Pres Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 16, 2012 7:30 AM in response to fiberopticsguy

Yes, we too are on Office 365 for corporate e-mal so options to run other types of clean-up jobs on the Exchange server or for us to patch our Exchange server.

Our testing for meetings where no one is on a distribution list seems to work regularly without issue. Unfortunately, the users that do get impacted the most are our leadership teams, as they are most likely to have delegates (admins) for e-mail, be invited by distribution list, most likely to be leveraging an iOS device whether iPhone, or iPad, or many times they have both. So when issues such as the new iOS calendar issues occur, the occur in the most visibile way possible.

iOS is our corporate standard for mobile, but continues to be challenging given the continuing issues. This isn't the first time we have experienced issues with new iOS releases and failure to work within the enterprise.

Also not happy that Microsoft doesn't secure ActiveSync. I don't understand the protocol limitation as to why Microsoft refuses to fix on their end as well, but I can't think of a design reason why a user's response would be allowed to assert ownership of a meeting assuming the meetings are "owned" by a central store such as Exchange server. Regardless the first issue still lies with iOS not behaving nicely.

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