A team of bug-hunters at Google have shared details of five flaws in Apple's iMessage software that could make its devices vulnerable to attack.

Axar.az reports citing foreign media.

In one case, the researchers said the vulnerability was so severe that the only way to rescue a targeted iPhone would be to delete all the data off it.

Another example, they said, could be used to copy files off a device without requiring the owner to do anything to aid the hack.

Apple released fixes last week.

But the researchers said they had also flagged a sixth problem to Apple, which had not been rectified in the update to its mobile operating system.

"That's quite unusual," commented Prof Alan Woodward, a cyber-security expert at the University of Surrey.

"The reputation of the Google Zero team is such that it is worth taking notice of."

The Project Zero team was established in July 2014 to uncover previously undocumented cyber-vulnerabilities. It has previously alerted Microsoft, Facebook and Samsung, among others, to problems with their code.