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Apple on Tuesday rolled out security updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and Safari web browser to address a new zero-day vulnerability that could result in the execution of malicious code. Tracked as  CVE-2022-42856 , the issue has been described by the tech giant as a type confusion issue in the WebKit browser engine that could be triggered when processing specially crafted content, leading to arbitrary code execution. The company said it's "aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1." While details surrounding the exact nature of the attacks are unknown as yet, it's likely that it involved a case of social engineering or a watering hole to infect the devices when visiting a rogue or legitimate-but-compromised domain via the browser. It's worth noting that every third-party web browser that's available for iOS and iPadOS, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edg

A Chinese hacking group has been found leveraging a new exploit chain in iOS devices to install a spyware implant targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority in China's autonomous region of Xinjiang. The findings, published by digital forensics firm Volexity , reveal that the exploit — named "Insomnia" — works against iOS versions 12.3, 12.3.1, and 12.3.2 using a flaw in WebKit that was patched by Apple with the release of iOS 12.4 in July 2019. Volexity said the attacks were carried out by a state-sponsored hacking group it calls Evil Eye , the same threat actor that it said was behind a series of attacks against the Uyghurs last September following a bombshell disclosure by Google's Project Zero team . China has long considered Xinjiang a breeding ground for " separatists, terrorists and religious extremists ," with the residents of the region — ethnically Turkic Muslims — thrown into concentration camps , and subjected to persecution and high-tech surv

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

If you use an Apple iPhone or a MacBook, we have a piece of alarming news for you. Turns out merely visiting a website — not just malicious but also legitimate sites unknowingly loading malicious ads as well — using Safari browser could have let remote attackers secretly access your device's camera, microphone, or location, and in some cases, saved passwords as well. Apple recently paid a $75,000 bounty reward to an ethical hacker, Ryan Pickren , who practically demonstrated the hack and helped the company patch a total of seven new vulnerabilities before any real attacker could take advantage of them. The fixes were issued in a series of updates to Safari spanning versions 13.0.5 (released January 28, 2020) and Safari 13.1 (published March 24, 2020). "If the malicious website wanted camera access, all it had to do was masquerade as a trusted video-conferencing website such as Skype or Zoom," Pickren said. When chained together, three of the reported Safari

Do you know Apple is sending iOS web browsing related data of some of its users to Chinese Internet company Tencent? I am sure many of you are not aware of this, neither was I, and believe me, none of us could expect this from a tech company that promotes itself as a champion of consumer privacy. Late last week, it was widely revealed that starting from at least iOS 12.2 , Apple silently integrated the " Tencent Safe Browsing " service to power its " Fraudulent Website Warning " feature in the Safari web browser for both iOS and macOS. Just like the Safe Browsing feature in Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, Safari's fraudulent website warning feature has also been designed to protect users from various online threats by simply checking every website they visit against a regularly updated list of malicious websites. Until iOS 12.2, Apple primarily relied on the database of "blacklisted websites" provided by Google's Safe Browsing service, whic

Beware Apple users! Your iPhone can be hacked just by visiting an innocent-looking website, confirms a terrifying report Google researchers released earlier today. The story goes back to a widespread iPhone hacking campaign that cybersecurity researchers from Google's Project Zero discovered earlier this year in the wild, involving at least five unique iPhone exploit chains capable of remotely jailbreaking an iPhone and implanting spyware on it. Those iOS exploit chains were found exploiting a total of 14 separate vulnerabilities in Apple's iOS mobile operating system—of which 7 flaws resided in Safari web browser, 5 in the iOS kernel and 2 separate sandbox escape issues—targeting devices with almost every version in that time-frame from iOS 10 through to the latest version of iOS 12. According to a deep-dive blog post published by Project Zero researcher Ian Beer, only two of the 14 security vulnerabilities were zero-days, CVE-2019-7287 and CVE-2019-7286, and unpat

A security researcher has discovered a serious vulnerability that could allow attackers to spoof website addresses in the Microsoft Edge web browser for Windows and Apple Safari for iOS. While Microsoft fixed the address bar URL spoofing vulnerability last month as part of its monthly security updates , Safari is still unpatched, potentially leaving Apple users vulnerable to phishing attacks. The phishing attacks today are sophisticated and increasingly more difficult to spot, and this newly discovered vulnerability takes it to another level that can bypass basic indicators like URL and SSL, which are the first things a user checks to determine if a website is fake. Discovered by Pakistan-based security researcher Rafay Baloch, the vulnerability (CVE-2018-8383) is due to a race condition type issue caused by the web browser allowing JavaScript to update the page address in the URL bar while the page is loading. Here's How the URL Spoofing Vulnerability Works Successfu

Google researcher has discovered a severe vulnerability in modern web browsers that could have allowed websites you visit to steal the sensitive content of your online accounts from other websites that you have logged-in the same browser. Discovered by Jake Archibald, developer advocate for Google Chrome, the vulnerability resides in the way browsers handle cross-origin requests to video and audio files, which if exploited, could allow remote attackers to even read the content of your Gmail or private Facebook messages. For security reasons, modern web browsers don't allow websites to make cross-origin requests to a different domain unless any domain explicitly allows it. That means, if you visit a website on your browser, it can only request data from the same origin the site was loaded from, preventing it from making any unauthorized request on your behalf in an attempt to steal your data from other sites. However, web browsers do not respond in the same way while fetc

A new vulnerability has been disclosed in iOS Camera App that could be exploited to redirect users to a malicious website without their knowledge. The vulnerability affects Apple's latest iOS 11 mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices and resides in the built-in QR code reader. With iOS 11, Apple introduced a new feature that gives users ability to automatically read QR codes using their iPhone's native camera app without requiring any third-party QR code reader app. You need to open the Camera app on your iPhone or iPad and point the device at a QR code. If the code contains any URL, it will give you a notification with the link address, asking you to tap to visit it in Safari browser. However, be careful — you may not be visiting the URL displayed to you, security researcher Roman Mueller discovered . According to Mueller, the URL parser of built-in QR code reader for iOS camera app fails to detect the hostname in the URL, which allows at

If you own an iPhone or iPad, it's possible you could see popup windows in a sort of endless cycle on your Safari browser, revealing your browser has been locked and asking you to pay a fee to unlock it. Just do not pay any ransom. A new ransomware campaign has been found exploiting a flaw in Apple's iOS Safari browser in order to extort money from users who view pornography content on their phones or attempt to illegally download pirated music or other sensitive content. However, the good news is that Apple patched the web browser vulnerability on Monday with the release of iOS version 10.3 . The vulnerability resides in the way Safari displayed JavaScript pop-up windows, which allowed ransomware scammers to display an endless loop of pop-up windows, preventing victims to use the browser, researchers from mobile security provider Lookout said in a blog post published on Monday. The victims eventually would end up on an attacker website that masquerades itself as a

Back in July, a security researcher disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in Mac OS X that allowed attackers to obtain unrestricted root user privileges with the help of code that even fits in a tweet . The same vulnerability has now been upgraded to again infect Mac OS X machines even after Apple fixed the issue last month. The privilege-escalation bug was once used to circumvent security protections and gain full control of Mac computers. Thanks to the environment variable DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE Apple added to the code of OS X 10.10 Yosemite. The vulnerability then allowed attackers to install malware and adware onto a target Mac, running OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), without requiring victims to enter system passwords. However, the company fixed the critical issue in the Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Beta builds as well as the latest stable version of Mac OS X – Version 10.10.5 . Mac Keychain Flaw Now, security researchers from anti-malware firm MalwareBytes spotted t

A serious security vulnerability has been uncovered in Apple's Safari web browser that could trick Safari users into visiting a malicious website with the genuine web address. A group of researchers, known as Deusen , has demonstrated how the address spoofing vulnerability could be exploited by hackers to fool victim into thinking they are visiting a trusted website when actually the Safari browser is connected to an entirely different address. This flaw could let an attacker lead Safari users to a malicious site instead of a trusted website they willing to connect to install malicious software and steal their login credentials. The vulnerability was discovered by the same group who reported a Universal Cross Site Scripting (XSS) flaw in all the latest patched versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in February this year that put IE users' credentials and other sensitive information at risk. The group recently published a proof-of-concept exploit code that makes

Apple's latest desktop operating system, known as Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite , sends location and search data of users without their knowledge to Apple's remote servers by default whenever a user queries the desktop search tool Spotlight, which questions users' privacy once again. The technology firm faced criticism on Monday when users came to know about the company's About Spotlight & Privacy which clearly states that anyone who uses the Spotlight feature in either Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite or its newly launched mobile operating system iOS 8 will have their location and search information passed back to Apple's servers to process. APPLE COLLECTS USERS' DATA AND FORWARDS IT TO MICROSOFT AS WELL On one hand, where Apple decided to enable hard drive encryption by default, despite the FBI requests not to do so. But on the other, the company is itself putting its users' privacy on risk. The same data Apple collects from the users' searched te

Apple has just released a pair of software updates for its Safari web browser addressing multiple Webkit vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, providing its users with 21 security patches. The critical bug resides in the Safari 7.0.4 for Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 and Safari 6.1.4 for OS X Lion 10.7.5, OS X Lion Server 10.7.5 and Mountain Lion 10.8.5. According to Apple's security advisory , All of the 21 security flaws address the iOS browser vulnerabilities proliferating through the Safari's open-source Webkit rendering engine. This webkit vulnerability allows a malicious website to execute an arbitrary code on the host computer or unexpected termination of an application in an effort to compromise users' confidential information. " Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution ," Apple warned in the advisory. Security updates tackle a number of flaws including: CVE-2013-2875 CVE-2013-2927 CV

The Keen Team – a mysterious group of Chinese hackers who hacked Apple's Safari Mac OS X Mavericks system in just 20 seconds and Windows 8.1. Adobe Flash in only 15 seconds during Pwn2Own Hacking Competition this year, are no more mysterious as the team revealed its members identity. In an interview with a Chinese newspaper on this 13 April, the key member of the Keen team and co-founder as well as chief operating officer of the team's Shanghai-based parent company, Lv Yiping said half of his team members are the top scoring students in the national college entrance examination, half of them are majored in mathematics, and half are from Microsoft. He also added that the team's eight core members are the top hackers in the country. The Kean team is the first Chinese hackers group to have won the prestigious title at the world hacking contest held in Vancouver this year in March. Back in 2013, they also took part in the Mobile Pwn2Own contest held in Tokyo and succe

So, is your Safari Web Browser Updated?? Make sure you have the latest web browser updated for your Apple Macintosh systems, as Apple released Safari 6.1.3 and Safari 7.0.3 with new security updates. These Security updates addresses multiple vulnerabilities in its Safari web browser, which has always been the standard browser for Mac users. This times not five or ten, in fact about two dozen. Apple issued a security update to patch a total of 27 vulnerabilities in Safari web browser, including the one which was highlighted at Pwn2Own 2014 hacking competition. The available updates replace the browser running OSX 10.7 and 10.8 with the latest versions of browser 6.1.3, and OSX 10.9 with 7.0.3. Among the 27 vulnerabilities, the most remarkable vulnerability addressed in the update is CVE-2014-1303 , a heap-based buffer overflow that can be remotely exploited and could lead to bypass a sandbox protection mechanism via unspecified vector. This vulnerability is