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Apple has sued NSO Group and its parent company Q Cyber Technologies in a U.S. federal court holding it accountable for illegally targeting users with its Pegasus surveillance tool, marking yet another setback for the Israeli spyware vendor. The Cupertino-based tech giant painted NSO Group as "notorious hackers — amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse." In addition, the lawsuit seeks to permanently prevent the infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into any Apple software, services or devices. The iPhone maker, separately, also revealed its plans to  notify targets  of state-sponsored spyware attacks and has committed $10 million, as well as any monetary damages won as part of the lawsuit, to cybersurveillance research groups and advocates. To that end, the company intends to display a "Threat Notification" after the targeted users sign into appleid.apple[...

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...

In the escalating battle between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Apple over iPhone encryption, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai just sided with Apple's refusal to unlock iPhone . Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the terrorists in the mass shootings in San Bernardino , California, in December. Here's What the FBI is Demanding: The federal officials have asked Apple to make a less secure version of its iOS that can be used by the officials to brute force the 4-6 digits passcode on the dead shooter's iPhone without getting the device's data self-destructed. Cook called the court order a "chilling" demand that "would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect." He argued that to help the FBI unlock the iPhone would basically ...

Unspecified governments have demanded mobile push notification records from Apple and Google users to pursue people of interest, according to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden. "Push notifications are alerts sent by phone apps to users' smartphones," Wyden  said . "These alerts pass through a digital post office run by the phone operating system provider -- overwhelmingly Apple or Google. Because of that structure, the two companies have visibility into how their customers use apps and could be compelled to provide this information to U.S. or foreign governments." Wyden, in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, said both Apple and Google confirmed receiving such requests but noted that information about the practice was restricted from public release by the U.S. government, raising questions about the transparency of legal demands they receive from governments. When mobile apps for Android and iOS send push notifications to users' devices, they are ro...

End of Apple vs. FBI . At least for now, when the FBI has unlocked iPhone successfully. Yes, you heard it right. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has unlocked dead terrorist's iPhone 5C involved in the San Bernardino shooting without the help of Apple. After weeks of arguments, the United States government is withdrawing its motion compelling Apple to build a backdoored version of its iOS that can help the agency unlock iPhone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook. The Department of Justice (DOJ) says that FBI has successfully accessed iPhone's data with the help of an undisclosed alternative method and that it no longer needs Apple's assistance. "The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook's iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance of Apple," the attorneys wrote in a court filing Monday. "Accordingly, the government hereby requests that the Order Compelling Apple Inc to Assist Agents i...

In Brief Apple's head of legal has denied all rumors about providing its complete source code or any backdoor to the Chinese government. Apple officially confirmed that the Chinese government has asked Apple twice in the past two years to hand over the source code for its operating system, but the company refused in both the cases. In a Tuesday hearing entitled "Deciphering the Debate Over Encryption: Industry and Law Enforcement Perspectives,"  the police officials put allegations on Apple for handing over user data to Beijing while refusing the authorities at its home in the US. However, speaking under oath at the congressional hearing, Apple's General Counsel Bruce Sewell denied the claims, saying "We have been asked by the Chinese government" for the source code behind the iPhone. But, "we refused." The response came just after Indiana State Police Captain Charles Cohen accused Apple of providing its source code to China. N...

Apple - 1; The FBI - 0 Apple Won a major court victory against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in an ongoing legal battle similar to San Bernardino. In a New York case, a federal magistrate judge has ruled in favor of Apple, rejecting the U.S. government’s request to force Apple to help the FBI extract data from a locked iPhone. This ruling from United States Magistrate Judge James Orenstein for the Eastern District of New York is a significant boost to Apple's pro-privacy stance to resist the agency's similar efforts over unlocking iPhone 5C of an alleged San Bernardino terrorist. The ruling [ PDF ] was issued on Monday as part of the criminal case against Jun Feng , who was pleaded guilty in October last year to drug charges. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized Feng's iPhone 5 last year, but even after consulting the FBI, it was unable to access the iPhone. According to both the DEA and FBI, it’s impossible for them to ov...

A Dutch-Moroccan team of hackers calling itself " Team DoulCi " have reportedly claimed to hack a protective feature on Apple ’s iCloud system, that could leverage an attacker to remove security measures on lost or stolen iPhone devices. According to a report from Dutch news organization De Telegraaf , the hackers purchased locked iPhone devices for $50 to $150 each and then bypassed Apple’s iCloud activation lock through a serious security vulnerability Apple has failed to patch with its most recent updates. The critical vulnerability in the Apple’s iCloud allowed them to unlock stolen iPhones in an instant, which could then be sold for a large profit in the Blackmarket. This is the first time when any hacker group has managed to compromise the highly secured Apple’s iCloud service. iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service provided by the Apple Inc. to its users since October 2011 with more than 320 million users across the world. The service all...

Apple is beefing up the security of its iCloud and Apple ID accounts by adding two-factor authentication to the account login process. Users who activate the option will be required to enter a four-digit code they may receive via SMS message, aside from the usual password. Two-factor authentication is gaining popularity because it makes login to online services significantly more secure compared to regular process. Apple has rolled out this functionality for Apple ID and iCloud users. " Turning on two-step verification reduces the possibility of someone accessing or making unauthorized changes to your account information at My Apple ID or making purchases using your account ," Apple said . Apple will be using both the app and SMS versions, providing security codes through texts as well as the FindMyiPhone app. As long as users are able to remember their password, they will have the ability to generate a new recovery key from the My Apple ID web...

Apple is making it easier for its users to download their data the company has collected about them so far. On Wednesday, Apple just launched a new Data and Privacy website that allows you to download everything that the company knows about you, from Apple ID info, device info, App Store activity, AppleCare history, your online shopping habits to all of your data stored in its iCloud. A similar feature was recently offered by Facebook, enabling its users to download all of their data , not only what they have posted, but also information like facial recognition and location data, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal . Apple has currently made this feature only available for people having accounts in European Union (along with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) act, which goes into effect on May 25. However, Apple is planning to roll out this feature worldwide in the coming months. "We inten...

A team of five security researchers analyzed several Apple online services for three months and found as many as 55 vulnerabilities, 11 of which are critical in severity. The flaws — including 29 high severity, 13 medium severity, and 2 low severity vulnerabilities — could have allowed an attacker to "fully compromise both customer and employee applications, launch a worm capable of automatically taking over a victim's iCloud account, retrieve source code for internal Apple projects, fully compromise an industrial control warehouse software used by Apple, and take over the sessions of Apple employees with the capability of accessing management tools and sensitive resources." The flaws meant a bad actor could easily hijack a user's iCloud account and steal all the photos, calendar information, videos, and documents, in addition to forwarding the same exploit to all of their contacts. The findings were  reported by Sam Curry  along with Brett Buerhaus, Ben Sadeghipo...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) worked with Israeli mobile forensic firm Cellebrite to unlock iPhone used in the San Bernardino shooting last year, confirmed by multiple sources familiar with the matter. The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) said on Tuesday that the FBI successfully unlocked iPhone and accessed data with the help of an undisclosed alternative method offered by a third party and that it no longer needs Apple's assistance. Apple was engaged in a legal encryption battle with the DoJ for a month over a court order that forces the company to write new software, which could disable passcode protection on Farook's iPhone 5C to help them access data on it. Apple refused to comply with the order, saying the FBI wants the company to create the " software equivalent of cancer " that would likely threaten the privacy and data security of millions of its iPhone users. FBI to Unlock iPhone in Several Pending Cases Althou...

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that accused the iPhone maker of invading users' privacy using its voice-activated Siri assistant. The development was first reported by Reuters. The settlement applies to U.S.-based individuals current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri-enabled device who had their confidential voice communications with the assistant "obtained by Apple and/or were shared with third-parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation" between September 17, 2014, and December 31, 2024. Eligible individuals can submit claims for up to five Siri devices – iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV – on which they claim to have experienced an accidental Siri activation during a conversation intended to be confidential or private. Class members who submit valid claims can receive $20 per device. The lawsuit was brought against Apple following a 2019 report from The Guar...

If you are an iPhone user and use Uber app, you would be surprised to know that widely popular ride-hailing app can record your screen secretly. Security researcher Will Strafach recently revealed that Apple selectively grants (what's known as an " entitlement ") Uber a powerful ability to use the newly introduced screen-recording API with intent to improve the performance of the Uber app on Apple Watch. The screen-recording API allows the Uber app to record user's screen information even when the app is closed, giving Uber access to all the personal information passing through an iPhone screen. What's more?  The company's access to such permission could make this data vulnerable to hackers if they, somehow, able to hijack Uber's software. "It looks like no other third-party developer has been able to get Apple to grant them a private sensitive entitlement of this nature," Strafach told Gizmodo , who first reported about the issue. ...

Apple Crash Reports Help Hackers to create a jailbreak exploit iPhone " jailbreaking " has been a hot topic since Apple released its smartphone more than two years ago. According to the Latest report posted by BBC  that Thousands of iPhone owners have joined forces with a team of hackers to help them find new ways to jailbreak Apple's phone software & Jailbreakers use Apple crash reports to unlock iPhones. You may be wondering and hearing alot on “ What Is Jailbreaking an Iphone? How do you do that? ” Jailbreaking is basically modifying the iPhone’s firmware so that you can get access to the internals of its operating system and install a whole slew of third-party applications on your iPhone that are not otherwise available through official channels.Jailbreaking your iPhone in and of itself doesn’t normally make much difference in your operation of it, but it does allow you to install other third-party applications that are not blessed by Apple. A collective of ...

Apple has filed a motion to "voluntarily" dismiss its lawsuit against commercial spyware vendor NSO Group, citing a shifting risk landscape that could lead to exposure of critical "threat intelligence" information. The development was first reported by The Washington Post on Friday. The iPhone maker said its efforts, coupled with those of others in the industry and national governments to tackle the rise of commercial spyware, have "substantially weakened" the defendants. "At the same time, unfortunately, other malicious actors have arisen in the commercial spyware industry," the company said. "It is because of this combination of factors that Apple now seeks voluntary dismissal of this case." "While Apple continues to believe in the merits of its claims, it has also determined that proceeding further with this case has the potential to put vital security information at risk." Apple originally filed the lawsuit again...

Apple has announced the launch of a "groundbreaking cloud intelligence system" called Private Cloud Compute (PCC) that's designed for processing artificial intelligence (AI) tasks in a privacy-preserving manner in the cloud. The tech giant described PCC as the "most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale." PCC coincides with the arrival of new generative AI (GenAI) features – collectively dubbed Apple Intelligence , or AI for short – that the iPhone maker unveiled in its next generation of software, including iOS 18 , iPadOS 18 , and macOS Sequoia . All of the Apple Intelligence features, both the ones that run on-device and those that rely on PCC, leverage in-house generative models trained on "licensed data, including data selected to enhance specific features, as well as publicly available data collected by our web-crawler, AppleBot." With PCC, the idea is to essentially offload complex requests that requir...