Apple | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Apple removed a number of virtual private network (VPN) apps in Russia from its App Store on July 4, 2024, following a request by Russia's state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, Russian news media reported. This includes the mobile apps of 25 VPN service providers, including Hidemy.name VPN, Le VPN, NordVPN, PIA VPN, Planet VPN, Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, according to Interfax and MediaZona . It's worth noting that NordVPN previously shut down all its Russian servers in March 2019. "Apple's actions, motivated by a desire to retain revenue from the Russian market, actively support an authoritarian regime," Red Shield VPN said in a statement. "This is not just reckless but a crime against civil society." In a similar notice, Le VPN said the takedown was carried out in accordance with No. 7 of Article 15.1 of the Federal Law dated July 27, 2006, No. 149-FZ "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection" and tha

Apple has released a firmware update for AirPods that could allow a malicious actor to gain access to the headphones in an unauthorized manner. Tracked as CVE-2024-27867, the authentication issue affects AirPods (2nd generation and later), AirPods Pro (all models), AirPods Max, Powerbeats Pro, and Beats Fit Pro. "When your headphones are seeking a connection request to one of your previously paired devices, an attacker in Bluetooth range might be able to spoof the intended source device and gain access to your headphones," Apple said in a Tuesday advisory. In other words, an adversary in physical proximity could exploit the vulnerability to eavesdrop on private conversations. Apple said the issue has been addressed with improved state management. Jonas Dreßler has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. It has been patched as part of AirPods Firmware Update 6A326, AirPods Firmware Update 6F8, and Beats Firmware Update 6F8. The development comes two week

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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

Apple and Google on Monday officially announced the rollout of a new feature that notifies users across both iOS and Android if a Bluetooth tracking device is being used to stealthily keep tabs on them without their knowledge or consent. "This will help mitigate the misuse of devices designed to help keep track of belongings," the companies said in a joint statement, adding it aims to address "potential risks to user privacy and safety." The proposal for a cross-platform solution was  originally unveiled  exactly a year ago by the two tech giants. The capability – dubbed " Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers " (DULT) – is available in Android devices running versions 6.0 and later, and iOS devices with iOS 17.5, which was officially shipped yesterday. As part of the industry specification, Android users will  receive  a "Tracker traveling with you" alert if an unidentified Bluetooth tracking device is detected as moving along with them over

Apple on Wednesday  revised  its documentation pertaining to its mercenary spyware threat notification system to mention that it alerts users when they may have been individually targeted by such attacks. It also specifically called out companies like NSO Group for developing commercial surveillance tools such as Pegasus that are used by state actors to pull off "individually targeted attacks of such exceptional cost and complexity." "Though deployed against a very small number of individuals — often journalists, activists, politicians, and diplomats — mercenary spyware attacks are ongoing and global," Apple  said . "The extreme cost, sophistication, and worldwide nature of mercenary spyware attacks makes them some of the most advanced digital threats in existence today." The update marks a change in wording that previously said these "threat notifications" are designed to inform and assist users who may have been targeted by state-sponsored

A new security shortcoming discovered in Apple M-series chips could be exploited to extract secret keys used during cryptographic operations. Dubbed  GoFetch , the vulnerability relates to a microarchitectural side-channel attack that takes advantage of a feature known as data memory-dependent prefetcher (DMP) to target constant-time cryptographic implementations and capture sensitive data from the CPU cache. Apple was made aware of the findings in December 2023. Prefetchers are a hardware optimization technique that predicts what memory addresses a currently running program will access in the near future and retrieve the data into the cache accordingly from the main memory. The goal of this approach is to reduce the program's memory access latency. DMP is a type of prefetcher that takes into account the contents of memory based on previously observed access patterns when determining what to prefetch. This behavior makes it ripe for cache-based attacks that trick the prefetche

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), along with 16 other state and district attorneys general, on Thursday  accused  Apple of illegally maintaining a monopoly over smartphones, thereby undermining, among other things, the security and privacy of users when messaging non-iPhone users. "Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct," the landmark antitrust lawsuit  said . "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests." "Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple's own financial interest – such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engin

Apple has released security updates to address several security flaws, including two vulnerabilities that it said have been actively exploited in the wild. The shortcomings are listed below - CVE-2024-23225  - A memory corruption issue in Kernel that an attacker with arbitrary kernel read and write capability can exploit to bypass kernel memory protections CVE-2024-23296  - A memory corruption issue in the RTKit real-time operating system (RTOS) that an attacker with arbitrary kernel read and write capability can exploit to bypass kernel memory protections It's currently not clear how the flaws are being weaponized in the wild. Apple said both the vulnerabilities were addressed with improved validation in iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, iOS 16.7.6, and iPadOS 16.7.6. The updates are available for the following devices - iOS 16.7.6 and iPadOS 16.7.6  - iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPad 5th generation, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, and iPad Pro 12.9-inch 1st generation iOS 17.4 and iP

Details have emerged about a now-patched high-severity security flaw in Apple's Shortcuts app that could permit a shortcut to access sensitive information on the device without users' consent. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-23204  (CVSS score: 7.5), was addressed by Apple on January 22, 2024, with the release of  iOS 17.3, iPadOS 17.3 ,  macOS Sonoma 14.3 , and  watchOS 10.3 . "A shortcut may be able to use sensitive data with certain actions without prompting the user," the iPhone maker said in an advisory, stating it was fixed with "additional permissions checks." Apple Shortcuts is a  scripting application  that allows users to create personalized workflows (aka macros) for  executing   specific tasks  on their devices. It comes installed by default on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS operating systems. Bitdefender security researcher Jubaer Alnazi Jabin, who discovered and reported the Shortcuts bug, said it could be weaponized to create a

Apple has announced a new post-quantum cryptographic protocol called  PQ3  that it said will be integrated into iMessage to secure the messaging platform against future attacks arising from the threat of a practical quantum computer. "With compromise-resilient encryption and extensive defenses against even highly sophisticated quantum attacks, PQ3 is the first messaging protocol to reach what we call Level 3 security — providing protocol protections that surpass those in all other widely deployed messaging apps," Apple  said . The iPhone maker described the protocol as "groundbreaking," "state-of-the-art," and as having the "strongest security properties" of any cryptographic convention deployed at scale. PQ3 is the latest security guardrail erected by Apple in iMessage after it switched from  RSA  to Elliptic Curve cryptography ( ECC ), and by protecting encryption keys on devices with the Secure Enclave in 2019. While the current algorith

Apple macOS users are the target of a new Rust-based backdoor that has been operating under the radar since November 2023. The backdoor,  codenamed   RustDoor  by Bitdefender, has been found to impersonate an update for Microsoft Visual Studio and target both Intel and Arm architectures. The exact initial access pathway used to propagate the implant is currently not known, although it's said to be distributed as FAT binaries that contain Mach-O files. Multiple variants of the malware with minor modifications have been detected to date, likely indicating active development. The earliest sample of RustDoor dates back to November 2, 2023. It comes with a wide range of commands that allow it to gather and upload files, and harvest information about the compromised endpoint. Some versions also include configurations with details about what data to collect, the list of targeted extensions and directories, and the directories to exclude. The captured information is then exfiltrate

Apple on Monday released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and Safari web browser to address a zero-day flaw that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The issue, tracked as CVE-2024-23222 , is a type confusion bug in the WebKit browser engine that could be exploited by a threat actor to achieve arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. The tech giant said the problem was fixed with improved checks. Type confusion vulnerabilities , in general, could be weaponized to perform out-of-bounds memory access, or lead to a crash and arbitrary code execution. In a terse advisory, Apple acknowledged it's "aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited," but did not share any other specifics about the nature of attacks or the threat actors leveraging the shortcoming. The updates are available for the following devices and operating systems - iOS 17.3 and iPadOS 17.3 - iPhone XS and later, iPad Pro 12.9-inch

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Apple macOS backdoor called  SpectralBlur  that overlaps with a known malware family that has been attributed to North Korean threat actors. "SpectralBlur is a moderately capable backdoor that can upload/download files, run a shell, update its configuration, delete files, hibernate, or sleep, based on commands issued from the [command-and-control server]," security researcher Greg Lesnewich  said . The malware shares similarities with  KANDYKORN  (aka SockRacket), an advanced implant that functions as a remote access trojan capable of taking control of a compromised host. It's worth noting that the KANDYKORN activity also intersects with another campaign orchestrated by the Lazarus sub-group known as BlueNoroff (aka TA444) which culminates in the deployment of a backdoor referred to as  RustBucket  and a late-stage payload dubbed  ObjCShellz . In recent months, the threat actor has been observed  combining disparate pieces of t

Apple on Monday released  security patches  for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and Safari web browser to address multiple security flaws, in addition to backporting fixes for two recently disclosed zero-days to older devices. This includes updates for  12 security vulnerabilities  in iOS and iPadOS spanning AVEVideoEncoder, ExtensionKit, Find My, ImageIO, Kernel, Safari Private Browsing, and WebKit.  macOS Sonoma 14.2 , for its part, resolves 39 shortcomings, counting six bugs impacting the  ncurses library . Notable among the flaws is  CVE-2023-45866 , a critical security issue in Bluetooth that could allow an attacker in a privileged network position to inject keystrokes by spoofing a keyboard. The vulnerability was disclosed by SkySafe security researcher Marc Newlin last week. It has been remediated in iOS 17.2, iPadOS 17.2, and macOS Sonoma 14.2 with improved checks, the iPhone maker said. Also released by Apple is  Safari 17.2 , containing fixes for two WebKit flaws – C

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

A new "post-exploitation tampering technique" can be abused by malicious actors to visually deceive a target into believing that their Apple iPhone is running in Lockdown Mode when it's actually not and carry out covert attacks. The novel method, detailed by Jamf Threat Labs in a  report  shared with The Hacker News, "shows that if a hacker has already infiltrated your device, they can cause Lockdown Mode to be 'bypassed' when you trigger its activation." In other words, the goal is to implement Fake Lockdown Mode on a device that's compromised by an attacker through other means, such as  unpatched security flaws  that can trigger execution of arbitrary code. Lockdown Mode , introduced by Apple last year with iOS 16, is an  enhanced security measure  that aims to safeguard high-risk individuals from sophisticated digital threats such as mercenary spyware by  minimizing the attack surface . What it doesn't do is prevent the execution of mali

Apple has  released  software updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari web browser to address two security flaws that it said have come under active exploitation in the wild on older versions of its software. The vulnerabilities, both of which reside in the WebKit web browser engine, are described below - CVE-2023-42916  - An out-of-bounds read issue that could be exploited to leak sensitive information when processing web content. CVE-2023-42917  - A memory corruption bug that could result in arbitrary code execution when processing web content. Apple said it's aware of reports exploiting the shortcomings "against versions of iOS before iOS 16.7.1," which was released on October 10, 2023. Clément Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with discovering and reporting the twin flaws. The iPhone maker did not provide additional information regarding ongoing exploitation, but previously disclosed zero-days in iOS have been used to  de

Meta-owned WhatsApp is officially rolling out a  new privacy feature  in its messaging service called "Protect IP Address in Calls" that masks users' IP addresses to other parties by relaying the calls through its servers. "Calls are end-to-end encrypted, so even if a call is relayed through WhatsApp servers, WhatsApp cannot listen to your calls," the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. The core idea is to make it harder for bad actors in the call to infer a user's location by securely relaying the connection through WhatsApp servers. However, a tradeoff to enabling the privacy option is a slight dip in call quality. Viewed in that light, it's akin to Apple's  iCloud Private Relay , which adds an anonymity layer by  routing users' Safari browsing sessions  through two secure internet relays. It's worth noting that the "Protect IP Address in Calls" feature has been under development since at least late Augu

A group of academics has devised a novel side-channel attack dubbed  iLeakage  that exploits a weakness in the A- and M-series CPUs running on Apple iOS, iPadOS, and macOS devices, enabling the extraction of sensitive information from the Safari web browser. "An attacker can induce Safari to render an arbitrary webpage, subsequently recovering sensitive information present within it using speculative execution," researchers Jason Kim, Stephan van Schaik, Daniel Genkin, and Yuval Yarom  said  in a new study. In a practical attack scenario, the weakness could be exploited using a malicious web page to recover Gmail inbox content and even recover passwords that are autofilled by credential managers. iLeakage, besides being the first case of a  Spectre-style   speculative execution   attack  against Apple Silicon CPUs, also works against all third-party web browsers available for iOS and iPadOS owing to Apple's App Store policy that mandates all browser vendors to use Saf