Hundreds of Millions of iPhones Can Be Hacked With a New Tool Found in the Wild

Post by walterbell » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

SimianSci wrote: post #43

MrDOS wrote: post #21

I wish I had a better sense of how these zero-click vulnerabilities work so I could get a sense of how to protect myself from them (you know, without giving in to Liquid Glass). Can they be blocked by an ad blocker? Are they blocked by any extant ad blockers? What about “Lockdown Mode”?

It's a watering hole attack. At any point your iphone sends an http request to a compromised site, by add, link, embedded, etc. your device will be exploited. there really isn't a way to permanently defeat this. We are about to see an explosion of novel attack types utilizing this exploit as their basis, you realistically cannot defend yourself against these without either updating or no longer using an iphone.

Post by lynndotpy » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #72

lynndotpy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Apple already released the patch in February, and Apple chose not not patch older releases. Apple of 2026 is not the same Apple of 2025. The people at Apple have held back iOS 18.7.3, iOS 18.7.4, iOS 18.7.5, or iOS 18.7.6 for most iPhones that support iOS 18. These are dozens of CVEs patched in these updates, including numerous exploits as bad or worse than the one described in this one. (Article is paywalled so…

> Lockdown Mode breaks call recording Do you mean screen recording? What are the symptoms of the bug?

Post by xoa » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

xoa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's really as bad as all that, they'll patch existing older releases. They have patched existing releases of iOS 18... but then they artificially restricted those patches only to a couple of phone models that don't support iOS 26. So if you're on a vaguely modern iDevice and are still on 18 because you don't want the new UI and other fuckups you are not allowed to install the patched 18. It'd be one thing if yo…

> you are not allowed to install the patched 18 Is it “you are not allowed,” or Cupertino isn’t going to bother developing and testing?

Post by ticulatedspline » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

skygazer wrote: post #76

jryio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not 8 major versions between iOS 18 and iOS 26. Apple skipped the monotonously increasing version numbering system since iOS 1 during WDDC 2025 to adopt a year suffix based versioning system. iOS 17, then iOS 18, then iOS 26, then iOS 27. You're not the only party confused.

Edit: Oop, I misread! Right, yes, the change up was arguably not entirely boring. Some people were excited at least. Originally: To be the annoying pedant, version numbers did still monotonically increase, even with the gap, because each version is >= to the last. The mono means a single direction, not a step size of one.

Post by rsync » Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #33

MrDOS wrote: post #21

I wish I had a better sense of how these zero-click vulnerabilities work so I could get a sense of how to protect myself from them (you know, without giving in to Liquid Glass). Can they be blocked by an ad blocker? Are they blocked by any extant ad blockers? What about “Lockdown Mode”?

Note that this is 1-click. 0-click example: receive an MMS with a malformed image that exploits a bug in decoding