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Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

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Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#121

Post by transpute »

fishywang wrote: post #94
transpute wrote: post #77

iMessage can be disabled by local MDM for supervised devices, via free Apple Configurator in macOS app store, https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/restrictions-for-... For Wi-Fi–only devices, the Messages app is hidden. For devices with Wi-Fi and cellular, the Messages app is still available, but only the SMS/MMS service can be used. SMS/MMS messages and non-emergency cellular radio traffic can be disabled by a…

We purchased an iPad with cellular, with the plan to put my home country's sim card in it so I can still receive SMS (as most of the banks there still requires SMS verification when you login), and it turns out that iPad with cellular does not really show you SMS's that's not from the carrier of the sim card.

> iPad with cellular does not really show you SMS's that's not from the carrier of the sim card.

Does iPad support SMS? The cellular line is usually only for data, https://www.howtogeek.com/710767/how-to-send-sms-text-messag...

  iPads can't send SMS text messages through Apple's Messages app. Even if you have an iPad with a cellular data plan for mobile internet on the go, you still can't send SMS text messages.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#122

Post by kornhole »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #101
vGPU wrote: post #86

[flagged]

I'd disagree with this. Apple execs surely know if this information gets leaked they're losing 30% market cap in a single day, why would they risk something like that when administrations change every 4-8 years?

Power is more important than profit. Those running the national security apparatus have been in power for 60 years. The fact that they still haven't released the documents on the JFK assassination evidences that they are still in power.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#123

Post by gusfoo »

WalterBright wrote: post #15

The extra hardware registers might have been discovered by examining the chip itself. One could find where the registers were on it, and notice some extra registers, then do some experimenting to see what they did.

> The extra hardware registers might have been discovered by examining the chip itself.

Perhaps. But it's easier to phone the technical librarian and say "Hi! I'm Bob from the password inspection department. Can you verify your current password for me?"

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#124

Post by [deleted] »

saagarjha wrote: post #88
manuelabeledo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that was just Kaspersky taking a jab at Apple, after being absolutely gutted by hackers because of their own poor security posture.

I don’t really see anything wrong with their security posture here.

[deleted]

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#125

Post by stefan_ »

woodruffw wrote: post #72
gustavus wrote: post #3

[flagged]

There's a fundamental category error at play here: exploit chains like this one and the one behind FORCEDENTRY[1] cost millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars to discover and weaponize, even before operationalization. The people finding and building these chains are doing so as part of nation-state intelligence operations; they go well beyond what any reasonable civilian threat model contains. Put another way:…

Sure they do, and yet at the bottom of them we keep finding.. iMessage. Which is like a funnel that takes untrusted external input and feeds it into various ancient unmaintained native code blobs that were thrown into iOS for the "time to market". This time it's an 90s Apple extension to TrueType in a 90s Apple library that presumably no font on an iPhone actually uses, last time it was the 90s fax machine image compression algorithm in a never updated open source library. You see, the full exploit cost many many millions, but at the bottom there are entirely self-inflicted basic failures.

It would be so great if someone at Apple could get the buy-in to clean out this zoo but try explaining that to a product manager at these places.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#126

Post by Despegar »

I'm curious to know from experts if there's anything Apple can do to create a step-change in terms of security of iPhones? Like if the going rate for a zero day is $1 million, is there anything Apple can do that can drive that up to $2 or $3 million? Or is it just going to be a perpetual cat and mouse game with no real "progress"?

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#127

Post by woodruffw »

stefan_ wrote: post #125
woodruffw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fundamental category error at play here: exploit chains like this one and the one behind FORCEDENTRY[1] cost millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars to discover and weaponize, even before operationalization. The people finding and building these chains are doing so as part of nation-state intelligence operations; they go well beyond what any reasonable civilian threat model contains. Put another way:…

Sure they do, and yet at the bottom of them we keep finding.. iMessage. Which is like a funnel that takes untrusted external input and feeds it into various ancient unmaintained native code blobs that were thrown into iOS for the "time to market". This time it's an 90s Apple extension to TrueType in a 90s Apple library that presumably no font on an iPhone actually uses, last time it was the 90s fax machine image comp…

Absolutely no disagreement there. iMessage's attack surface is ludicrously large for the actual behavior it delivers on the average user's phone.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#128

Post by 542458 »

xvector wrote: post #90

Does Lockdown Mode prevent agains this?

I think lockdown drops most iMessage features, so I would suspect the answer is yes. But as far as I can tell, lockdown prevents use of mdm, so it might be a net negative for security… instead, using the mdm policy that disables iMessage might be preferable.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#129

Post by halJordan »

sampa wrote: post #37

[flagged]

I just dont get this mentality. Here is proof positive (if you believe attribution) that the NSA is using exquisite and exotic techniques to force their way into iphones and you look at it and come up with the exact opposite conclusion that Apple is letting them into the iphone. Its not a backdoor if you're smashing in the window.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#130

Post by ckcheng »

sevg wrote: post #71
dilyevsky wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what lockdown mode already does

No, Lockdown Mode doesn't disable iMessage. "Most message attachments are blocked and some features are unavailable." iMessage with blue bubbles still works in Lockdown Mode. I think GIFs don't display properly and certain other attachments, but I can share photos, audio clips and video so I otherwise don't really notice that Lockdown Mode is enabled.

Unfortunately, Lockdown Mode disables Live Photos from being received via iMessage... That's a pretty big iPhone feature to not work under Lockdown Mode!
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