New Delhi, Feb 14 (IANS): Apple has issued a new security update to fix a vulnerability in iPhone and iPad's operating systems that hackers have been exploiting in the wild.

The security patch is available for iPhone 8 and later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 5th generation and later, iPad mini 5th generation and later, according to the company.

"Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution," said Apple.

The tech giant admitted that it "is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited".

Apple acknowledged The Citizen Lab at The University of Toronto's Munk School for their assistance in discovering and alerting the company about the vulnerability..

The Citizen Lab is known for exposing government hacking sypware made by Israel's NSO Group.

This latest bug was in WebKit, Apple's browser engine that's used in Safari.

The iOS 16.3.1 and iPadOS 16.3.1 security updates are now available for download to fix the vulnerability.

Last year, Apple released a major update (iOS 14.5) that allows users to tell apps to stop tracking them, adds 217 new emojis, and fixes a slew of 50 security bugs, according to Motherboard.

The company had also released another update to fix two vulnerabilities that hackers were using to exploit iPhones in the wild.