Security

A Sudo bug found in the Linux and BSD operating systems has now been found to also be present in macOS. The news was confirmed by two security researchers.

The bug could allow an ordinary user to gain root access to a Mac, though an attacker would also need to combine with malware or a brute-force attack to gain user access in the first place …

Speaking at the EU data protection conference CPDP today, Tim Cook gave the opening keynote with his talk entitled “A path to empowering user choice and boosting user trust in advertising.” Cook covered Apple’s concerns about privacy and security in the technology industry, the hope it sees for change going forward, what it is doing to protect privacy, its deep concerns and consequences with Facebook’s business model, and much more.

A security researcher at Johns Hopkins University who led an examination into the robustness of smartphone encryption systems says he was shocked by the Android and iOS vulnerabilities they discovered.

He said that iOS in particular has extremely secure encryption capabilities, but these are not in use much of the time …

Earlier this year Apple launched a new program called the Security Research Device Program to help researchers find vulnerabilities in iOS and also in its devices. Researchers can apply to get the special hardware since June, and now the company is finally shipping these “rooted” iPhones to those who have been accepted.

A suspected state-sponsored attack saw dozens of iPhones hacked by exploiting an iMessage vulnerability that remained unpatched for around a year. The attack was a so-called zero-click one because it didn’t require the victims to take any action: the hack was enabled simply by receiving a text message.

The victims of the attack were Al Jazeera journalists, and is believed to have been carried out on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates governments, using spyware developed by Israeli company NSO Group. It is suspected that these journalists are a ‘minuscule’ fraction of the iPhones hacked using this method …

Apple, along with Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, today banned from their respective web browsers a malicious certificate that was being used by the Kazakhstan government to intercept HTTPS traffic coming from the city of Nur-Sultan, the country’s capital.

A massive security failing by Apple allowed an attacker to take total remote control of iPhones within WiFi range. They would be able to download all the data on the phone, and even activate the iPhone’s cameras and microphones to provide real-time spying capabilities.

The vulnerability was not just a theoretical risk: a noted Google security researcher was able to demonstrate the capabilities by taking full remote control of an iPhone in another room …

We explained way back in 2014 why you might want to have an Apple ID recovery key. In those days, it was an extra precaution you could take against getting locked out of your account.

Apple abandoned recovery keys when it switched to a smarter two-factor authentication process, before reintroducing them in a new form in iOS 14. However, they now work in a different way. You definitely won’t want to enable one now, and you may not want to do so ever …

As Apple launched its new macOS operating system to the public yesterday, serious server outages occurred that saw widespread Big Sur download/install failures, iMessage and Apple Pay go down but more than that, even performance issues for users running macOS Catalina and earlier. We learned why that happened at a high-level yesterday, now security researcher Jeffry Paul has shared a deep-dive of his understanding along with his privacy and security concerns for Macs, especially Apple Silicon ones.

Update: Apple has shared a response to Paul’s concerns in an updated support document that includes what macOS does to protect your privacy and security, and three new steps it will take in the future for greater privacy and flexibility.

Almost all popular messaging apps offer link previews, which let users know the content of a URL in advance. However, security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk have discovered that these link previews can expose user data in both iOS and Android apps.

The notorious GravityRAT spyware, which initially targeted Windows PCs, now also enable attacks against Macs and Android devices.

Remote Access Trojans (RATs) are so-called because they masquerade as legitimate apps (the Trojan part) and then permit the compromised machine to be accessed remotely …

Update at the bottom: Another team with another cable able to hijack a Mac, among other devices.

The T2 exploit team who found a way to take over the security chip in modern Macs has demonstrated a way to do so without user intervention — using nothing more than a modified USB-C cable.

The ad-hoc team, who call themselves Team t8012 after Apple’s internal name for the chip, believe that nation-states may already be using this approach.

Speculation that the T2 security chip on modern Macs can be hacked has been confirmed by the team behind the research. A combination of two different exploits would give a hacker the ability to modify the behavior of the chip, and even plant malware like a keylogger inside it.

All Macs sold since 2018 contain the T2 chip, and because the attack uses code in the read-only memory section of the chip, there is no way for Apple to patch it …

Update: Apple implemented this request in iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4.

Face ID is normally a completely seamless way to unlock an iPhone and iPad: just swipe up and it unlocks automatically. At a time when we’re frequently wearing masks, however, it’s rather less seamless.

So we’d like to see Apple allow an unlocked Apple Watch to automatically unlock an iPhone and iPad …