I recently wrote about the new iOS feature that forces an iPhone to reboot after it’s been inactive for a longish period of time. Here are the technical details, discovered through reverse engineering. The feature triggers after seventy-two hours of inactivity, even it is remains connected to Wi-Fi …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Phishers are using a novel technique to trick iOS and Android users into installing malicious apps that bypass safety guardrails built by both Apple and Google to prevent unauthorized apps. Both mobile operating systems employ mechanisms designed to help users steer clear of apps that …
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson) Vulnerabilities that went undetected for a decade left thousands of macOS and iOS apps susceptible to supply-chain attacks. Hackers could have added malicious code compromising the security of millions or billions of people who installed them, researchers said Monday. The vulnerabilities, which were fixed last …
Enlarge (credit: Kim et al.) Researchers have devised an attack that forces Apple’s Safari browser to divulge passwords, Gmail message content, and other secrets by exploiting a side channel vulnerability in the A- and M-series CPUs running modern iOS and macOS devices. iLeakage, as the academic researchers have …
Both Apple and Google have recently reported critical vulnerabilities in their systems—iOS and Chrome, respectively—that are ultimately the result of the same vulnerability in the libwebp library: On Thursday, researchers from security firm Rezillion published evidence that they said made it “highly likely” both indeed stemmed from …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Apple has patched a potent chain of iOS zero-days that were used to infect the iPhone of an Egyptian presidential candidate with sophisticated spyware developed by a commercial exploit seller, Google and researchers from Citizen Lab said Friday. The previously unknown vulnerabilities, which Apple patched …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) End users, admins, and researchers better brace yourselves: The number of apps being patched for zero-day vulnerabilities has skyrocketed this month and is likely to get worse in the following weeks. People have worked overtime in recent weeks to patch a raft of vulnerabilities actively …
Make sure you update your iPhones : Citizen Lab says two zero-days fixed by Apple today in emergency security updates were actively abused as part of a zero-click exploit chain (dubbed BLASTPASS) to deploy NSO Group’s Pegasus commercial spyware onto fully patched iPhones. The two bugs, tracked as CVE-2023-41064 …
Kaspersky is reporting a zero-click iOS exploit in the wild: Mobile device backups contain a partial copy of the filesystem, including some of the user data and service databases. The timestamps of the files, folders and the database records allow to roughly reconstruct the events happening to the device …
Enlarge Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky has been hit by an advanced cyberattack that used clickless exploits to infect the iPhones of several dozen employees with malware that collects microphone recordings, photos, geolocation, and other data, company officials said. “We are quite confident that Kaspersky was not the main target …
The most recent iPhone update—to version 16.1.2—patches a zero-day vulnerability that “may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1.” News : Apple said security researchers at Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which investigates nation state-backed spyware, hacking and cyberattacks, discovered …
Researchers claim that supposedly anonymous device analytics information can identify users: On Twitter, security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry have found that Apple’s device analytics data includes an iCloud account and can be linked directly to a specific user, including their name, date of birth, email …
People have suspected this for a while, but Apple has made it official. It only commits to fully patching the latest version of its OS, even though it claims to support older versions. From ArsTechnica : In other words, while Apple will provide security-related updates for older versions of its …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A security researcher says that Apple's iOS devices don't fully route all network traffic through VPNs as a user might expect, a potential security issue the device maker has known about for years. Michael Horowitz, a longtime computer security blogger and researcher, puts it plainly …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) (Update, Aug. 18, 2:40 p.m.: Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen said in a statement: "The fact that this is still an issue is disappointing to say the least. We first notified Apple privately of this issue two years ago. Apple declined to …
I haven’t written about Apple’s Lockdown Mode yet, mostly because I haven’t delved into the details. This is how Apple describes it: Lockdown Mode offers an extreme, optional level of security for the very few users who, because of who they are or what they do …
Apple has introduced lockdown mode for high-risk users who are concerned about nation-state attacks. It trades reduced functionality for increased security in a very interesting way. [...]
Enlarge (credit: Classen et al.) When you turn off an iPhone, it doesn’t fully power down. Chips inside the device continue to run in a low-power mode that makes it possible to locate lost or stolen devices using the Find My feature or use credit cards and car …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Last year, Apple enacted App Tracking Transparency, a mandatory policy that forbids app makers from tracking user activity across other apps without first receiving those users’ explicit permission. Privacy advocates praised the initiative, and Facebook warned it would spell certain doom for companies that rely …
Enlarge (credit: Kirill Kudryavtsev | Getty Images) Russia’s biggest Internet company has embedded code into apps found on mobile devices that allows information about millions of users to be sent to servers located in its home country. The revelation relates to software created by Yandex that permits developers to …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Scammers pushing iOS malware are stepping up their game by abusing two legitimate Apple features to bypass App Store vetting requirements and trick people into installing malicious apps. Apple has long required that apps pass a security review and be admitted to the App Store …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) For the past four months, Apple’s iOS and iPadOS devices and Safari browser have violated one of the Internet’s most sacrosanct security policies. The violation results from a bug that leaks user identities and browsing activity in real time. The same-origin policy is …
Researchers have figured how how to intercept and fake an iPhone reboot: We’ll dissect the iOS system and show how it’s possible to alter a shutdown event, tricking a user that got infected into thinking that the phone has been powered off, but in fact, it’s …
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) Apple has released several security updates this week to patch a "FORCEDENTRY" vulnerability on iOS devices. The "zero-click, zero-day" vulnerability has been actively exploited by Pegasus, a spyware app developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, which has been known to target activists …
Apple’s NeuralHash algorithm — the one it’s using for client-side scanning on the iPhone — has been reverse-engineered. Turns out it was already in iOS 14.3, and someone noticed : Early tests show that it can tolerate image resizing and compression, but not cropping or rotations. We also have …