The iPhone did not get less secure. It has always had this security hole. I, like many others here on HN, believe the vulnerability to be related to the lack of a secure hardware biometric / encryption module. If this is the case, then your iPhone probably did not get less secure -- such exploits would only work on iPhones prior to the 5S (I think? The 6 series phones are covered for sure). Basically, if your phone supports Apple Pay, you're good.
And if it's the case, it was a design decision rather than a bug. The secure hardware wasn't ready for consumer use when those devices were designed (and even then, the first generation of iPhone fingerprint readers was pretty bad). Apple knew a desoldering attack could be successful, but such attacks are very expensive, require long-term physical possession of the phone, and are impossible to pull off covertly. There may be another way to pull off a direct hardware access attack without actually needing to desolder the flash memory, but that would still only be effective in the absence of a hardware security module. The only defense against this type of attack is a secure hardware encryption module like the one Apple included to support Apple Pay (because the banks likely insisted on this level of security).
The iPhone did not get less secure. It has always had this security hole. I, like many others here on HN, believe the vulnerability to be related to the lack of a secure hardware biometric / encryption module. If this is the case, then your iPhone probably did not get less secure -- such exploits would only work on iPhones prior to the 5S (I think? The 6 series phones are covered for sure). Basically, if your phone supports Apple Pay, you're good.
And if it's the case, it was a design decision rather than a bug. The secure hardware wasn't ready for consumer use when those devices were designed (and even then, the first generation of iPhone fingerprint readers was pretty bad). Apple knew a desoldering attack could be successful, but such attacks are very expensive, require long-term physical possession of the phone, and are impossible to pull off covertly. There may be another way to pull off a direct hardware access attack without actually needing to desolder the flash memory, but that would still only be effective in the absence of a hardware security module. The only defense against this type of attack is a secure hardware encryption module like the one Apple included to support Apple Pay (because the banks likely insisted on this level of security).