Security News
Apple has released security updates to fix two zero-day vulnerabilities, with one publicly disclosed and the other exploited in the wild by attackers to hack into iPhones and Macs. The first zero-day patched today [1, 2] is a memory corruption bug in the IOMobileFrameBuffer that affects iOS, iPadOS, and macOS Monterey.
A security bod scored a $100,500 bug bounty from Apple after discovering a vulnerability in Safari on macOS that could have been exploited by a malicious website to potentially access victims' logged-in online accounts - and even their webcams. Ryan Pickren, last seen on The Register after scooping $75k from Cupertino's coffers for finding an earlier webcam-snooping flaw, said the universal cross-site scripting bug in Safari could have been abused by a webpage to hijack a web account the user is logged into, which would be bad. It was also possible to activate the webcam.
Apple is preparing to repair a bug in its WebKit browser engineer that has been leaking data from its Safari 15 browser at least since the problem was reported last November. Updates made available on Thursday to Apple developers - iOS 15.3 RC and macOS 12.2 RC - reportedly fix the flaw, an improper implementation of IndexedDB API that allows websites to track users and potentially identify them.
Typically, a web browser permits scripts on one web page to access data on a second web page only if both pages have the same origin/back-end server. Without this security policy in place, a snooper who manages to inject a malicious script into one website would be able to have free access to any data contained in other tabs the victim may have open in the browser, including access to online banking sessions, emails, healthcare portal data and other sensitive information.
Researchers at browser identification company FingerprintJS recently found and disclosed a fascinating data leakage bug in Apple's web browser software. At first telling, the bug sounds both undramatic and unimportant: although it allows private data to leak between separate browser tabs that contain content from unrelated websites, the amount of data that leaks is minuscule.
A software bug introduced in Apple Safari 15's implementation of the IndexedDB API could be abused by a malicious website to track users' online activity in the web browser and worse, even reveal their identity. That's not the case with how Safari handles the IndexedDB API in Safari across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. "In Safari 15 on macOS, and in all browsers on iOS and iPadOS 15, the IndexedDB API is violating the same-origin policy," Martin Bajanik said in a write-up.
Apple has released security updates to address a persistent denial of service dubbed doorLock that would altogether disable iPhones and iPads running HomeKit on iOS 14.7 and later. Apple has addressed this severe resource exhaustion issue in iOS 15.2.1 and iPadOS 15.2.1 by adding improved input validation which no longer allows attackers to disable vulnerable devices.
Apple on Wednesday rolled out software updates for iOS and iPadOS to remediate a persistent denial-of-service issue affecting the HomeKit smart home framework that could be potentially exploited to launch ransomware-like attacks targeting the devices. The iPhone maker, in its release notes for iOS and iPadOS 15.2.1, termed it as a "Resource exhaustion issue" that could be triggered when processing a maliciously crafted HomeKit accessory name, adding it addressed the bug with improved validation.
Some European cellphone carriers, and now T-Mobile, are blocking Apple’s Private Relay anonymous browsing feature. This could be an interesting battle to watch.
A new iPhone technique can hijack and prevent any shut-down process that a user initiates, simulating a real power-off while allowing malware to remain active in the background. "The NoReboot approach simulates a real shutdown. The user cannot feel a difference between a real shutdown and a fake shutdown. There is no user-interface or any button feedback until the user turns the phone back 'on'we cannot, and should not, trust a normal reboot."