Security News > 2023 > September > Apple zero-click iMessage exploit used to infect iPhones with spyware

Citizen Lab says two zero-days fixed by Apple today in emergency security updates were actively abused as part of a zero-click exploit chain to deploy NSO Group's Pegasus commercial spyware onto fully patched iPhones.

The two bugs, tracked as CVE-2023-41064 and CVE-2023-41061, allowed the attackers to infect a fully-patched iPhone running iOS 16.6 and belonging to a Washington DC-based civil society organization via PassKit attachments containing malicious images.

"We refer to the exploit chain as BLASTPASS. The exploit chain was capable of compromising iPhones running the latest version of iOS without any interaction from the victim," Citizen Lab said.

"The exploit involved PassKit attachments containing malicious images sent from an attacker iMessage account to the victim."

Apple and Citizen Lab security researchers discovered the two zero-days in the Image I/O and Wallet frameworks.

iPad Pro, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 5th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later.

News URL

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/apple-zero-click-imessage-exploit-used-to-infect-iphones-with-spyware/