The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: hack iPhone

Watch out Apple users! The default mailing app pre-installed on millions of iPhones and iPads has been found vulnerable to two critical flaws that attackers are exploiting in the wild, at least, from the last two years to spy on high-profile victims. The flaws could eventually let remote hackers secretly take complete control over Apple devices just by sending an email to any targeted individual with his email account logged-in to the vulnerable app. According to cybersecurity researchers at ZecOps, the bugs in question are remote code execution flaws that reside in the MIME library of Apple's mail app—first, due to an out-of-bounds write bug and second, is a heap overflow issue. Though both flaws get triggered while processing the content of an email, the second flaw is more dangerous because it can be exploited with 'zero-click,' where no interaction is required from the targeted recipients. 8-Years-Old Apple Zero-Days Exploited in the Wild According to the

Looking for a hack to bypass the passcode or screen lock on iPhones? Jose Rodriguez, an iPhone enthusiast, has discovered a passcode bypass vulnerability in Apple's new iOS version 12 that potentially allows an attacker to access photos and contacts, including phone numbers and emails, on a locked iPhone XS and other recent iPhone models. Rodriguez, who also discovered iPhone lock screen hacks in the past, has posted two videos (in Spanish) on his YouTube channel under the account name Videosdebarraquito demonstrating a complicated 37-step iPhone passcode bypass process. The iPhone authorization screen bypass flaw works on the latest iPhones, including the iPhone XS, running Apple's latest iOS 12 beta and iOS 12 operating systems. Video Demonstrations: Here's How to Bypass iPhone Passcode As you can watch in the video demonstrations, the iPhone hack works provided the attacker has physical access to the targeted iPhone that has Siri enabled and Face ID either disa

Bad news for Apple. The Chinese hacking team Pangu is back and has once again surprised everyone with a jailbreak for iOS 12 running on the brand-new iPhone XS. Well, that was really fast. Pangu jailbreak team has been quiet for a while, since it last released the untethered jailbreak tool for iOS 9 back in October 2015. Jailbreaking is a process of removing limitations on Apple's iOS devices so users can install third-party software not certified by Apple. Today, Android and iOS security researcher Min(Spark) Zheng shared a Tweet with two screenshots showing a working jailbreak on Apple's newly released iPhone XS with A12 Bionic chip achieved by one of the Pangu researchers. The Tweet also revealed that the iOS 12 jailbreak works by bypassing a functional PAC (Pointer authentication codes) mitigation implemented in the new Apple's A12 Bionic chip. Moreover, since the hardware of iPhone XS is very much identical to iPhone XS Max, the new iOS 12 jailbreak expl

India-linked highly targeted mobile malware campaign, first unveiled two weeks ago , has been found to be part of a broader campaign targeting multiple platforms, including windows devices and possibly Android as well. As reported in our previous article , earlier this month researchers at Talos threat intelligence unit discovered a group of Indian hackers abusing mobile device management (MDM) service to hijack and spy on a few targeted iPhone users in India. Operating since August 2015, the attackers have been found abusing MDM service to remotely install malicious versions of legitimate apps, including Telegram, WhatsApp, and PrayTime, onto targeted iPhones. These modified apps have been designed to secretly spy on iOS users, and steal their real-time location, SMS, contacts, photos and private messages from third-party chatting applications. During their ongoing investigation, Talos researchers identified a new MDM infrastructure and several malicious binaries – designed

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have waged legal war on encryption and privacy technologies. You may have heard many news stories about the legal battle between Apple and the FBI over unlocking an iPhone that belonged to the San Bernardino shooter. However, that was just one battle in a much larger fight. Now, in an effort to make its iPhone surveillance-and-hack proof, Apple has rehired security expert and cryptographer Jon Callas , who co-founded the widely-used email encryption software PGP and the secure-messaging system Silent Circle that sells the Blackphone. This is not Apple's first effort over its iPhone security . Just a few months back, the company hired Frederic Jacobs , one of the key developers of Signal — World's most secure, open source and encrypted messaging app . Now Apple has rehired Callas, who has previously worked for Apple twice, first from 1995 to 1997 and then from 2009 to 2011. During his second joining, Callas designed a ful

Hard time for mobile phone users! Just recently, two severe vulnerabilities in Qualcomm Snapdragon chip and Stagefright were spotted on the Android platform, affecting more than a Billion and Millions of devices respectively. And now: Hackers have discovered a new way to install malicious apps onto your iPhone without your interaction. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have uncovered a new strain of malware that can infect Non-Jailbroken (factory-configured) iPhones and iPads without the owner's knowledge or interaction, leaving hundreds of millions of Apple iOS devices at risk. Dubbed AceDeceiver , the iPhone malware installs itself on iOS devices without enterprise certificates and exploits designing flaws in Apple's digital rights management (DRM) protection mechanism called FairPlay. What's more concerning about this malware: Unlike most iOS malware, AceDeceiver works on factory-configured (non-jailbroken) iOS devices as well. FairPlay

Amid an ongoing dispute with the United States government over a court order to unlock iPhone 5C of one of the San Bernardino shooters Syed Farook… ...Apple started working on implementing stronger security measures "even it can't hack" to achieve un-hackability in its future iPhones. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is deliberately forcing Apple to create a special, backdoored version of iOS that could let them brute force the passcode on Farook's iPhone without erasing data. However, the FBI approached the company to unlock the shooter's iPhone 5C in various ways like: Create a backdoor to shooter's iPhone. Disable the Auto-destruct feature after numerous tries. Increase the brute force time to try out all combinations. Minimize the time of waiting for a window after each try. ..and much more Apple is still fighting the battle even after the clear refusal to the court that it will not provide any backdoor access to the a

US Federal Official: Unlock that iPhone for me? Apple: Sorry, Nobody can do this! Neither we, nor you. Yes, in a similar manner, Apple told a U.S. federal judge that it is " IMPOSSIBLE " to access data stored on a locked iPhone running iOS 8 or later iOS operating system. In short, Apple has reminded everyone that the tech giant can not, and will not, break its users' encryption if the government official asks it to. Apple revealed this in a court filing late Monday in response to the U.S. federal magistrate judge, who is being requested by the Justice Department to force the company to help authorities extract data from a seized iPhone. However, Apple says that it has the " technical ability " to help federal enforcement unlock older iOS devices – and almost 10 percent of iOS devices are running older versions of the operating system. In the brief filed Monday, Apple said : "In most cases now and in the future, the government's requested order would

Less than a month after Apple suffered one of its biggest malware attacks ever, security researchers have discovered another strain of malware that they claim targets both jailbroken as well as non-jailbroken iOS devices . Last month, researchers identified more than 4,000 infected apps in Apple's official App Store, which was targeted by a malware attack in which some versions of software used by developers to build apps for iOS and OS X were infected with malware, named XcodeGhost . And Now: Researchers from a California-based network security firm Palo Alto Networks have discovered new malware that targets Apple's iOS users in China and Taiwan. Capabilities of YiSpecter Malware Dubbed YiSpecter , the malware infects iOS devices and once infected, YiSpecter can: Install unwanted apps Replace legitimate apps with ones it has downloaded Force apps to display unwanted, full-screen ads Change bookmarks as well as default search engines in Safari S

Setting a passcode on your iPhone is the first line of defense to help prevent other people from accessing your device. However, it's pretty easy for anyone to access your personal photographs and contacts from your iPhone running iOS 9 in just 30 seconds or less, even with a passcode and/or Touch ID enabled. Just yesterday, the Security firm Zerodium announced a Huge Bug Bounty of 1 Million Dollars for finding out zero-day exploits and jailbreak for iPhones and iPads running iOS 9. Now... A hacker has found a new and quite simple method of bypassing the security of a locked iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod touch) running Apple's latest iOS 9 operating system that could allow you to access the device's photos and contacts in 30 seconds or less. Yes, the passcode on any iOS device running iOS 9.0 is possible to bypass using the benevolent nature of Apple's personal assistant Siri. Here's the List of Steps to Bypass Passcode: You need to follow

Good news for Hackers and Bug hunters! You can now WIN 1 Million Dollars for finding zero-day hacks for iPhones and iPads. Yes, $1,000,000.00 Reward This Huge Bug Bounty is offered by the new Security firm  Zerodium , a startup of the infamous French-based Security firm " VUPEN ", who is well known for buying and selling zero-day vulnerabilities. Zerodium, which describes itself as "the premium zero-day acquisition platform," announced a total of $3 Million ($3,000,000) bounty bounty rewards for iOS exploits and jailbreaks. $3 Million Reward for Zero-day exploits and Jailbreaks  The Zero-day Acquisition Firm challenges hackers, researchers, and bug hunters to discover zero-day flaws and exploits in Apple's latest mobile operating system iOS 9 that must allow an attacker to remotely compromise a non-jailbroken iOS device through: A web page, In-app browsing action, or text message or MMS (Multi-Media Messages) "The whol

Security researchers at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have worked for almost a decade to target security keys used to encrypt data stored on Apple devices in order to break the system. Citing the top-secret documents obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept blog reported that among an attempt to crack encryption keys implanted into Apple's mobile processor, the researchers working for CIA had created a dummy version of Xcode . CIA's WEAPON TO HACK APPLE DEVICES Xcode is an Apple's application development tool used by the company to create the vast majority of iOS apps. However using the compromised development software, CIA, NSA or other spies agencies were potentially allowed to inject surveillance backdoor into programs distributed on Apple's App Store. In addition, the custom version of Xcode could also be used to spy on users, steal passwords, account information, intercept communications, and disable core security features of

Yet another Apple vulnerability has been exposed by security researchers, that can be exploited to track your finger's every action on iOS Devices i.e. iPhone , iPad etc. The exploit reportedly targets a flaw in iOS multitasking capabilities to capture user inputs, according to Security researchers at  FireEye . They found a way to bypass the Apple's app review process effectively and created a proof-of-concept Monitoring app for non-jailbroken iOS 7.0.x devices. The " monitoring " app, that runs in the background of the iPhone is a Keylogger Trojan which could allow hackers to monitor user's activities on the mobile device, including - touches on the screen, home button press, volume button press and TouchID press , and send all collected events to any remote server. According to researchers, their proof-of-concept app works on versions 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, and 6.1.x. " Based on the findings, potential attackers can either use phishing to mislead the vi