Researchers identify Safari IP leak affecting Apple Private Relay

WebKit issues can reveal addresses behind Private Relay

Researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk say Apple’s iCloud Private Relay can be circumvented, allowing a website to reveal the real IP address that the opt-in privacy feature is intended to hide while a person browses with Safari. They described the issue in a blog post and published a website designed to test whether an address leaks.

TechCrunch tested that site on Tuesday and reported that it disclosed the publication’s real IP address despite Private Relay being enabled. The problem was first reported by 404 Media. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The researchers attribute the exposure to three features in WebKit, Apple’s browser engine. WebKit is used by all browsers on iOS, making the technical scope more significant than Safari alone, even though Private Relay itself operates while using Safari.

Private Relay is not a system-level VPN

Private Relay is available to iCloud+ subscribers and is designed to obscure a user’s IP address during Safari browsing. It is not a virtual private network, however: a VPN protects the IP address at the system level, whereas Private Relay does not provide that scope of protection.

That distinction is central to risk assessment. A user may see Private Relay as an IP-hiding control, but the reported WebKit flaws create a route for sites to identify the address it is expected to conceal. The researchers’ test page gives users a way to check whether their real address is exposed.

The report follows a separate Apple privacy concern around Apple Hide My Email privacy concerns, where account privacy controls also faced questions about the handling of identifying information. In the Private Relay case, the reported weakness concerns the browser engine and the visibility of a network address during web access.

Mitigations and operational implications

Mysk said in a post on X that the researchers chose not to report the issue to Apple, citing what they described as past delays, inconsistent communication and disagreement over the impact of reported issues. The researchers develop the private browser Psylo and say it now includes mitigations intended to prevent IP-address leakage when Psylo is used.

For organisations, Private Relay should be evaluated as a Safari-specific privacy feature rather than as a substitute for system-level network protection. Teams handling IP-sensitive work should test the browsers and devices in use, understand where WebKit applies, and select controls aligned with the required confidentiality level.