Apple Paul pays 8,288,000 to white-hat hackers who ran the company’s network


Inside the black and white Apple Pal logo, the computer screen creates a silhouette for anyone to type.

Nick Wright. Used by permission.

For months, Apple’s corporate network was at risk of hacks that could potentially steal sensitive data from millions of its customers and run malicious code on their phones and computers, a security researcher said Thursday.

Sam CurryIn total, he and his team found 55 vulnerabilities, said the 20-year-old researcher, who specializes in website security. He took 11 of them seriously because they allowed him to take control of Apple’s basic infrastructure and steal private emails, iCloud data and other private information from there.

The 11 critical errors were:

  • Remote code execution by author authorization and authentication bypass
  • Authentication bypass allows global administrator access by incorrectly configured permission
  • Command injection by unsupported filename argument
  • Remote code execution via leaked secret and exposed administrator tool
  • Memory leaks compromise employee and user accounts that allow .coccess of various built-in applications
  • Vertica SQL injection by unsanctioned input parameter
  • Allows Vermable stored XSS attacker to completely compromise complex iCloud account
  • Vermable stored XSS allows Attacker to completely compromise victim iCloud account
  • Full Feedback SSRF allows an attacker to read internal source code and access .protected resources.
  • Allows Blind XSS Attacker to access internal support portal for customer and employee issue tracking
  • Server-Side PhantomJS Execution Allows Attacker to Access Internal Resources and Recover AWS IAM Keys

Often in the hours of its initial consultation, Apple immediately fixed the vulnerabilities after reporting them within three months. The company has processed about half of the vulnerabilities so far and is committed to paying 8,288,500 for them. Once Apple handles the rest of the moment, then let’s say, the total payout can exceed 500,000.

“If the issues had been exploited by an attacker, Apple would have suffered a massive loss of information and integrity,” Karen said in an online chat just hours after the 500-word article was titled. We hacked Apple Pal for 3 months: here’s what we found. “For example, attackers will have access to the internal tools used to manage user information and will also be able to modify systems around hackers’ intentional work.”

Curry said the hacking project is a joint venture involving fellow researchers:

Two of the worst

These were among the most serious risks posed by cross-site scripting vulnerabilities (commonly abbreviated as XSS) stored in JavaScript parsers used by servers on www.iCloud.com. ICloud Apple Apple Mail service, so the blame can be used to send an email to someone with iCloud.com or m.com.com that contains malicious characters.

The target just needs to open the email to be hacked. Once that happened, the script, hidden inside the malicious email, allowed the hacker to perform any targeted actions while accessing iClouding in the browser. Below is a video featuring a proof-of-concept exploit that sent all photos and contacts of the target to the attacker.

Proof of imagination

Kare said the stored XSS vulnerability is flawed, meaning that when it does nothing but open the malicious email it spreads from user to user. Such a worm would have worked by inserting a script that sent the same composition email to each iCloud.com or m.com address in the victim’s contact list.

A separate vulnerability in the site, reserved for Apple Pal special teachers, was the result of assigning a default password – “### INVALID #%! 3” (not including quotation marks) – when someone submitted an application containing a username, first and last name, Email address, and employer.

“If someone applied using this system and you can authenticate yourself, the functionality exists, you can simply login to their account using the default password and completely bypass the ‘sign in with Apple moment’ login gin. Do, “Kari wrote.

Eventually, the hackers were able to log into the user’s account manually, using fierce brawls to deify the user named “Erb”. The hackers then started logging in to many other user accounts, one of which had “master moderator” privileges on the network. The image below shows the Jiv console, which is used to run forline forums, which they saw.

With control over the interface, hackers could run arbitrary commands on a web server that could control an add.apple.com subdomain and an accessed LDAP service that stores user account credentials. With that, they could access much of the rest of Apple’s internal network.

Knock out

Overall, Curry’s team identified and reported 55 vulnerabilities, 11 severe, 29 high, 13 medium and two low intensity. The list and their dates are listed in Curry’s blog post, which is linked above.

As the list above makes clear, the detailed hacks here are just two of the long list of curry done and his team was able to run it. They introduced them under Apple’s Bug-Bounty program. Curry’s post states that Apple Pay has paid a total of 51 51,500 in exchange for private reports related to the four vulnerabilities.

While I was in the process of reporting and writing this post, Curry said he received an email from Apple Paul informing him that the company pays an additional 23 7,237,000 for 28 other vulnerabilities.

My response to the email was: ‘Wow! I’m in a weird state of shock right now, “Kari told me. “I have never received such a return at once. Everyone in our group is still a little sporadic. ”

He said he expects the total payment to exceed $ 500,000 once Apple Pal handles all the reports.

A spokesman for Apple Pal released a statement saying:

At Apple Moment, we vigilantly protect our networks and have dedicated teams of information security professionals working to detect and respond to threats. As soon as the researchers warned us about the detailed issues in their report, we immediately fixed the vulnerabilities and took steps to prevent such future problems. Based on our lugs, researchers were the first to discover vulnerabilities so we’re confident no user data has been misused. We value our collaboration with security researchers to help keep our users safe and give the team credit for their assistance and reward them with the Apple Pal Security Bounty program.