The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: Sign in with Apple ID

Apple earlier this year fixed a security vulnerability in iOS and macOS that could have potentially allowed an attacker to gain unauthorized access to a user's iCloud account. Uncovered in February by Thijs Alkemade , a security specialist at IT security firm Computest, the flaw resided in Apple's implementation of TouchID (or FaceID) biometric feature that authenticated users to log in to websites on Safari, specifically those that use Apple ID logins. After the issue was reported to Apple through their responsible disclosure program, the iPhone maker addressed the vulnerability in a server-side update . An Authentication Flaw The central premise of the flaw is as follows. When users try to sign in to a website that requires an Apple ID, a prompt is displayed to authenticate the login using Touch ID. Doing so skips the two-factor authentication step since it already leverages a combination of factors for identification, such as the device (something you have) and

Apple recently paid Indian vulnerability researcher Bhavuk Jain a huge $100,000 bug bounty for reporting a highly critical vulnerability affecting its ' Sign in with Apple ' system. The now-patched vulnerability could have allowed remote attackers to bypass authentication and take over targeted users' accounts on third-party services and apps that have been registered using 'Sign in with Apple' option. Launched last year at Apple's WWDC conference, ' Sign in with Apple ' feature was introduced to the world as a privacy-preserving login mechanism that allows users to sign up an account with 3rd-party apps without disclosing their actual email addresses (also used as Apple IDs). In an interview with The Hacker News, Bhavuk Jain revealed that the vulnerability he discovered resided in the way Apple was validating a user on the client-side before initiating a request from Apple's authentication servers. For those unaware, while authenticating

Just like 'login with Google,' 'login with Facebook,' Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media site, you would now be able to quickly sign-up and log into third-party websites and apps using your Apple ID. What's the difference? Well, Apple claims that signing-in with Apple ID would protect users' privacy by not disclosing their actual email addresses to the 3rd-party services and also limiting personal information to the minimum necessary data. While announcing 'Sign in with Apple' today at WWDC, the company revealed that the feature has been designed to randomly generate a new unique email address for each different service a user sign-up with, and will forward all emails to your primary email ID, internally. "It [randomly generate emails] is a smart jab against spam: Not only will you be able to turn off spammy email more easily, but you'll also be able to see who exactly is sharing and selling your email widely when that random a