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evacide

Everybody go update your iPhones.

The new 0-click vuln exploited by NSO Group is sent via a malicious image in iMessage.

citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpas

35 comments
Apple Annie :mstdn:

@evacide It really is starting to feel like WindowsXP around here.

Jima

@evacide Thanks! Taking the photo of myself rebooting 5 Apple devices at the same time was challenging, but I felt the absurdity made it worth the effort.

Rich Felker

@evacide FFS maybe Apple could start not accepting or at least not auto loading embedded media from senders you don't know??? 🤦

Rich Felker

@evacide Platforms where folks you don't know can cold call you (email, SMS, iMessage) should ideally never support anything but pure text. If that ship has already sailed, loading non pure text content should be only on request.

Rich Felker

@evacide Aside from avoiding 0day vulns and phishing, it'd avoid having to see the faces of spamming political candidates.

lj·rk

@dalias @evacide While it's not the default, I encourage everyone to turn on lockdown mode on iOS.

Rich Felker

@ljrk @evacide Does lockdown mode do this? That sounds good. Sadly though a lot of things are coupled under one switch, so unless you can accept all the individual inconveniences it entails, you can't get any of the benefits, so there's strong incentive to leave it off.

evacide

@dalias @ljrk The CL blog post has just added a note saying that they believe High Security mode is safe against this exploit.

lj·rk

@evacide @dalias I'm *pretty* sure I read in their docs that it disables parsing of untrusted message media content, but of course also restricts Js in the browser etc.

We're daily-driving an iPad in Lockdown Mode but didn't face any issues tbfh, the restrictions aren't noticeable to us. We mainly use it for browsing and media streaming.

jaseg

@evacide Either some exploit developer somewhere just happens to really like taking apart iMessage, or Apple has a serious flaw in their entire systems security design.

evacide

@jaseg Finding vulns in iMessage is highly lucrative for people who sell exploits to governments.

jaseg

@evacide I'm wondering how much of that is because of poor design decisions on Apple's part, and how much because of the sheer market penetration of iMessage on iOS.

Elias

@jaseg

It could be that NSO Group have a mole working inside Apple, someone on the inside who is deliberately planting the needed kind of security holes "by mistake".

@evacide

jaseg

@eliasr As far as I understand, in iOS by design iMessage just happens to sit in an uniquely vulnerable spot. Having done some reverse engineering myself, I can totally see how with sufficient funding you can develop these exploits without any moles, or even a source code leak.

huntingdon

@evacide

Perhaps not so oddly, Apple spins the update for a critical security vulnerability by first promoting "21 new emoji."

Eilonwy

@evacide @Alleman Just did. Grateful for all of you posting these warnings. Many thanks!

Siguza

@http @evacide Uhh, did you go into settings and disable it explicitly? Do you expect a measurable percentage of the population to do so?

http :verified:

@siguza @evacide That was more a joke. In some countries, iMessage is even the main communication tool, for whatever reason, but even in countries where it's not often used, it's rarely disabled completely, as you correctly noticed.

spv :verified:

@http @siguza @evacide in my experience, in the US, imessage is (often) the default messaging application

Jimmy Hoke :tardis:

@evacide can we please stop using memory-unsafe languages to gangle arbitrary input from the public.

Also, I have the iOS 17 beta, is that version safe?

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