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iOS Privacy: Easily get a user's Apple ID password, just by asking

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Re: iOS Privacy: Easily get a user's Apple ID password, just by asking

#3
This is related to an issue called root-phishing or superuser-phishing. You can do this with the Windows admin password prompt, the MacOS prompt, or with Linux sudo, as long as you can run code from a user account or edit a single file.

    alias sudo='sudo ./somethingbad; sudo'
I'm surprised you don't hear about this that often. There is no perfect solution, since any visual feedback the operating system can do to make their prompt "official-looking" is possible by an application as well, unless the operating system can display information the user would recognize that it not accessible by the application. A perfect solution on iOS is to "minimize" the application so that the home screen is shown and then show the password prompt. The user would immediately recognize the wallpaper and icons to be theirs, which are two pieces of information unavailable to the application. However, the application could still fool the user by displaying the box over the application anyway.

Re: iOS Privacy: Easily get a user's Apple ID password, just by asking

#5
post #3

This is related to an issue called root-phishing or superuser-phishing. You can do this with the Windows admin password prompt, the MacOS prompt, or with Linux sudo, as long as you can run code from a user account or edit a single file. alias sudo='sudo ./somethingbad; sudo' I'm surprised you don't hear about this that often. There is no perfect solution, since any visual feedback the operating system can do to make…

>A perfect solution on iOS is to "minimize" the application so that the home screen is shown and then show the password prompt.

IIRC, this is similar to what happens in Windows since Vista. When you need to input your root password, all applications are minimized and you only see a dim wallpaper and the password prompt.

Re: iOS Privacy: Easily get a user's Apple ID password, just by asking

#7
post #2

For a while iOS would just seemingly randomly ask me to enter my icloud password. I’m so used to this that without reading this article I would have literally fall for this every single time.

I had the same issue, but I was so paranoid that I would always cancel out and not put in my password. I'm 95% sure it was legit, but randomly asking my password for seemingly no reason made me paranoid.

Re: iOS Privacy: Easily get a user's Apple ID password, just by asking

#9
post #5
post #3

This is related to an issue called root-phishing or superuser-phishing. You can do this with the Windows admin password prompt, the MacOS prompt, or with Linux sudo, as long as you can run code from a user account or edit a single file. alias sudo='sudo ./somethingbad; sudo' I'm surprised you don't hear about this that often. There is no perfect solution, since any visual feedback the operating system can do to make…

>A perfect solution on iOS is to "minimize" the application so that the home screen is shown and then show the password prompt. IIRC, this is similar to what happens in Windows since Vista. When you need to input your root password, all applications are minimized and you only see a dim wallpaper and the password prompt.

Right, but in Windows can't any application reproduce that behavior?
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