A team from the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab found dangerous vulnerabilities in the iPhone that allowed it to take control of, among others, above the smartphone’s microphone. Someone was supposed to eavesdrop for four years, among others. diplomats.
As described by the American portal Ars Technica on Wednesday, cybersecurity researchers published the results of an investigation into extremely dangerous security vulnerabilities that allowed almost anyone with an iPhone to be eavesdropped on for four years.
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The most dangerous vulnerability in history? Thousands of iPhones tapped. The target is specialists and diplomats
The vulnerabilities were discovered by Kaspersky Lab, which noticed that some iPhones belonging to its employees were infected with malware later called Triangulation – today described as probably the most advanced exploit in history. An exploit is a program that uses existing vulnerabilities in software, and this one was supposed to use as many as four holes for which no manufacturer’s patches were available (so-called zero-day).
As Ars Technica writes, the software infected at least several dozen smartphones at Kaspersky alone. However, the Russian company claims that the main target of the hackers who exploited the vulnerability were politicians and dignitaries – primarily diplomats from other countries who came to Russia as part of diplomatic missions over the last few years.
Experts say that basically any iPhone could have been the target of the attack, because the only thing that needed to be done to turn it into a listening device was to send a specially crafted message via iMessage. The software infection took place without the need for the recipient of the message to click on the link or any other interaction. The infected iPhone could, in turn, record audio, take photos, save location and collect other sensitive data and then send it to hackers’ servers. The only drawback was the fact that after turning the Apple smartphone off and on, the attack had to be carried out again.
It is not clear who and how could have found out about the existence of such a dangerous vulnerability and exploited it. However, experts say that he must have had a great knowledge of the structure of Apple smartphones, because they found vulnerabilities in a certain “undocumented hardware function.” Fortunately, current iPhones running iOS 17 are now completely resistant to the attack.
2023-12-29 20:14:00
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