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A researcher at Google Project Zero has discovered an iOS exploit that allows a threat actor to remotely take over a person’s iPhone. The vulnerability, which has now been patched, puts sensitive corporate information stored on business smartphones at risk, as well as a substantial amount of personal data.
The vulnerability allowed hackers to remotely take control of some iPhones and other iOS devices, allowing them to read messages, view images, essentially monitor everything that was happening, as long as the device was relatively close.
The exploit, which is explained in painstaking detail here, was discovered by Project Zero researcher Ian Beer, taking advantage of the Apple Wireless Direct Link protocol used to create mesh networks for features like AirDrop and Sidecar.
“In this demo, I remotely triggered an unauthenticated kernel memory corruption vulnerability that causes all nearby iOS devices to reboot, without user interaction,” Beer explained. “For the next 30,000 words, I will cover the entire process to go from this basic demo to successfully exploiting this vulnerability to run arbitrary code on any nearby iOS device and steal all user data.”
Taking the remote control
Admittedly, it took Beer six months to exploit the iPhone flaw, but the researcher argues that this shouldn’t give Apple, or any iPhone owner, many reasons for comfort.
Many other threat actors will have greater resources and knowledge at their disposal, potentially allowing for a faster response. He also theorizes that directional antennas and higher transmission powers could greatly increase the viable range of such attacks.
Apple’s security updates released earlier this year have fixed the vulnerability in question and users of the latest versions of iOS will be protected.
However, while there is no evidence that this iPhone flaw has been exploited in the wild, the discovery remains a troubling development, particularly for Apple, which prides itself on its security credentials.
Via The Verge
