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NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

citizenlab.ca

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Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#401

Post by callalex »

londons_explore wrote: post #171

How many exploits has iMessage had now? Isn't it time we made first messages from all new contacts plain text only, and all other messages some very restricted subset rather than some crazy extensible system that isn't so different from ActiveX? And on top of that, maybe the whole app should run in a sandbox. And on top of that, perhaps it should all be a webview to give one more layer of protection.

There is even precedent for doing this seamlessly: the Apple Mail client will not render media from unknown senders without user confirmation. iMessage should have the exact same behavior for the same reasons. It’s frustrating to watch greedy project managers re-learning the exact same lessons that a previous generation already learned the hard way, especially when they all work in the same building.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#402

Post by tiahura »

agnosticmantis wrote: post #297

I find it interesting that most comments here are blaming the victim (Apple’s iMessage and by transitivity its users) rather than the aggressor (NSO and its users). How come NSO isn’t yet designated as a (cyber-)terrorist group worth hunting down and extinguishing?

When Russian or NK linked groups engage in cyberterrorism, there are plenty of calls to hold those countries accountable for giving the groups cover. Why is NSO treated differently?

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#403

Post by RetpolineDrama »

agnosticmantis wrote: post #297

I find it interesting that most comments here are blaming the victim (Apple’s iMessage and by transitivity its users) rather than the aggressor (NSO and its users). How come NSO isn’t yet designated as a (cyber-)terrorist group worth hunting down and extinguishing?

>How come NSO isn’t yet designated as a (cyber-)terrorist group worth hunting down and extinguishing?

Answering this would violate HN guidelines/moderation policy.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#404

Post by callalex »

agnosticmantis wrote: post #297

I find it interesting that most comments here are blaming the victim (Apple’s iMessage and by transitivity its users) rather than the aggressor (NSO and its users). How come NSO isn’t yet designated as a (cyber-)terrorist group worth hunting down and extinguishing?

It is a huge stretch to take a political concept that applies to vulnerable individual humans (victim blaming) and apply that to a dominant, highly profitable corporation. Despite the big lies you have been told by American politicians, corporations are not people in any sense at all.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#405

Post by lazide »

ipaddr wrote: post #373
lazide wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re misunderstanding. Mossad likely wouldn’t let anyone pay enough. Or let NSO accept. Unless they were already friends enough to not need to worry much about cost.

Mossad would encourage it. Moosad is not a gang where you cannot leave. They want ex-mossad in high positions because they can leverage that later.

Spotted the handler, hah. Leverage because no one ever really leaves, do they?

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#406

Post by callalex »

saagarjha wrote: post #322
purkka wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, no kernel vulnerability or anything is mentioned. As far as I know, any parsing code for iMessages should run within the BlastDoor sandbox – is there another vulnerability in the chain that is not reported here?

It may be the case that either the kernel vulnerability hasn't been analyzed or fixed yet, or that they were not able to capture it. Many of these exploits have multiple stages and grabbing the later ones is difficult.

Is that still true when you control the source code and compiler? Or just for external researchers?

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#407

Post by xxs »

jacquesm wrote: post #270
hot_gril wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? They'll just buy iPhones in some other country.

GPS is a thing. iPhones have GPS.

That sound so naive, or fanboy - it ain't funny. GPS can be spoofed, and the entire hardware that decodes it replaced.

Trying to hide a hardware device that's sold in billions is not going to happen.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#408

Post by lazide »

acdha wrote: post #365
lazide wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) of course they would. Or worse (see Gerald bull). 2) any company doing that would have to be insanely naive or reckless.

1. Consider that there might possibly be room between designing long-range weapons for an enemy state and working for an allied country. 2. Indeed: that’s my second paragraph above.

Consider as well that designing (known obsolete at the time, with no practical threat to Israel) long range weaponry for a relatively benign enemy (Iraq was never Iran or Egypt) is likely far more forgivable than assisting a far more powerful foreign power with a history of at times cool relations with Israel with the current high priority useful intelligence tool which they are known to have a unusual world class edge in right now.

Gerald Bull was annoying. Someone good leaving any of the APT groups in Israel to help Apple get better security or anyone else would be borderline treason.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#409

Post by callalex »

kbos87 wrote: post #180

Naive question, does apple have any way of detecting and informing users who are current victims of these types of exploits when security fixes are issued?

Apple won’t even let you see the logging output of their security software scans without extracting information from undocumented SQL databases.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#410

Post by [deleted] »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #234

Its super interesting to me how much its emphasized that you shouldn't use Lockdown Mode unless you are a journalist or otherwise in direct palpable danger. They really do try to talk you out of it. Its curious, because there's very little difference in functionality (as experienced by the user) other than disabling a lot of Apple nonsense from running in the background expanding your attack surface. And everybody pa…

[deleted]
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