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 …
This is from 404 Media : The Graykey, a phone unlocking and forensics tool that is used by law enforcement around the world, is only able to retrieve partial data from all modern iPhones that run iOS 18 or iOS 18.0.1, which are two recently released versions of …
Everybody is reporting about a new security iPhone security feature with iOS 18: if the phone hasn’t been used for a few days, it automatically goes into its “Before First Unlock” state and has to be rebooted. This is a really good security feature. But various police departments …
Not a lot of details : Apple has issued a new round of threat notifications to iPhone users across 98 countries, warning them of potential mercenary spyware attacks. It’s the second such alert campaign from the company this year, following a similar notification sent to users in 92 nations …
Kaspersky researchers are detailing “an attack that over four years backdoored dozens if not thousands of iPhones, many of which belonged to employees of Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky.” It’s a zero-click exploit that makes use of four iPhone zero-days. The most intriguing new detail is the targeting of …
Apple is rolling out a new “Stolen Device Protection” feature that seems well thought out: When Stolen Device Protection is turned on, Face ID or Touch ID authentication is required for additional actions, including viewing passwords or passkeys stored in iCloud Keychain, applying for a new Apple Card, turning …
Signal has had the ability to manually authenticate another account for years. iMessage is getting it : The feature is called Contact Key Verification, and it does just what its name says: it lets you add a manual verification step in an iMessage conversation to confirm that the other person …
The Flipper Zero is an incredibly versatile hacking device. Now it can be used to crash iPhones in its vicinity by sending them a never-ending stream of pop-ups. These types of hacks have been possible for decades, but they require special equipment and a fair amount of expertise. The …
Enlarge / Private Wi-Fi address setting on an iPhone. (credit: Apple) Three years ago, Apple introduced a privacy-enhancing feature that hid the Wi-Fi address of iPhones and iPads when they joined a network. On Wednesday, the world learned that the feature has never worked as advertised. Despite promises that this …
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 …
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 …
Thieves cut through the wall of a coffee shop to get to an Apple store, bypassing the alarms in the process. I wrote about this kind of thing in 2000, in Secrets and Lies (page 318): My favorite example is a band of California art thieves that would break …
They’re using commercial phones, which go through the Ukrainian telecom network : “You still have a lot of soldiers bringing cellphones to the frontline who want to talk to their families and they are either being intercepted as they go through a Ukrainian telecommunications provider or intercepted over the …
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 …
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. [...]
Firm says function is intended for users who face ‘grave, targeted threats to their digital security’ Apple is launching a “lockdown mode” for its devices to protect people – including journalists and human rights activists – targeted by hacking attacks like those launched by government clients of NSO Group using its …
Researchers have demonstrated iPhone malware that works even when the phone is fully shut down. t turns out that the iPhone’s Bluetooth chip — which is key to making features like Find My work — has no mechanism for digitally signing or even encrypting the firmware it runs. Academics at …
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 …
A Berlin-based company has developed an AirTag clone that bypasses Apple’s anti-stalker security systems. Source code for these AirTag clones is available online. So now we have several problems with the system. Apple’s anti-stalker security only works with iPhones. (Apple wrote an Android app that can detect …
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: Getty Images) The iPhones of nine US State Department officials were infected by powerful and stealthy malware developed by NSO Group, the Israeli exploit seller that has come under increasing scrutiny for selling its wares to customers who in turn use it to spy on journalists, lawyers …
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 …
Citizen Lab is reporting on two zero-click iMessage exploits, in spyware sold by the cyberweapons arms manufacturer NSO Group to the Bahraini government. These are particularly scary exploits, since they don’t require to victim to do anything, like click on a link or open a file. The victim …
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 …