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#APPLE SECURITY UPDATE SPYWARE IPHONES IWATCHES INSTALL#

That same year, a Times reporter obtained NSO marketing materials for prospective new clients that mentioned a remote, zero-click capability.Apple's newest iPhone operating system is set to land on Monday, but iPhone users should still use the weekend to update their phones before it drops, in order to install a critical security patch. A 2015 hack of one of NSO’s chief competitors, Hacking Team, a Milan-based spyware outfit, revealed emails showing Hacking Team executives scrambling to match a remote, zero-click exploit that its customers claimed NSO had developed. NSO was long suspected of having a zero-click capability.

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Last year, Citizen Lab found a digital trail suggesting NSO may have a zero-click exploit to read Apple iMessages, but researchers never discovered the full exploit. In 2019, researchers uncovered that a similar NSO zero-click exploit had been deployed against 1,400 users of WhatsApp, the Facebook messaging service. The zero-click exploit, which Citizen Lab dubbed “Forcedentry,” was among the most sophisticated exploits discovered by forensics researchers. Marczak said, based on the timing of his discovery of Pegasus on the Saudi activist’s iPhone and other iPhones in March, it was safe to say the spyware had been siphoning data from Apple devices for at least six months. With the victim none the wiser, his or her most sensitive communications, data and passwords were siphoned off to servers at intelligence and law-enforcement agencies around the globe.Ĭitizen Lab said the scale and scope of the operation was unclear.

That image, which was invisible to the user, exploited a vulnerability in the way that Apple processes images and allowed the Pegasus spyware to be quietly downloaded onto Apple devices. Marczak said he found that the Saudi activist, who declined to be identified, had received an image. Sales of spyware are locked up in nondisclosure agreements and are frequently rolled into classified programs, with limited, if any, oversight.

#APPLE SECURITY UPDATE SPYWARE IPHONES IWATCHES SOFTWARE#

In July, ransomware criminals used a zero day in software sold by the tech company Kaseya to bring down the networks of some 1,000 companies.įor years, the spyware industry has been a black box. This year, Chinese hackers were caught using zero days in Microsoft Exchange to steal emails and plant ransomware. This year marks a record for the discovery of so-called zero days, secret software flaws like the one that NSO used to install its spyware. Shalev Hulio, a co-founder of NSO Group, vehemently denied the list’s accuracy, telling The Times, “This is like opening up the white pages, choosing 50,000 numbers and drawing some conclusion from it.” It also included 14 heads of state, including President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly of Egypt, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, Saad-Eddine El Othmani, who until recently was the prime minister of Morocco, and Charles Michel, the head of the European Council. The consortium did not disclose how it had obtained the list, and it was unclear whether the list was aspirational or whether the people had actually been targeted with NSO spyware.Īmong those listed were Azam Ahmed, who had been the Mexico City bureau chief for The Times and who has reported widely on corruption, violence and surveillance in Latin America, including on NSO itself and Ben Hubbard, The Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, Lebanon, who has investigated rights abuses and corruption in Saudi Arabia and wrote a recent biography of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

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Starting in 2016, a series of New York Times investigations revealed the presence of NSO’s spyware on the iPhones of Emirati activists lobbying for expanded voting rights Mexican nutritionists lobbying for a national soda tax lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 Mexican students academics who helped write anti-corruption legislation journalists in Mexico and England and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by Mexico’s police. The company has said that it sells its spyware only to governments that meet strict human rights standards and that it expressly requires customers to agree to use its spyware only to track terrorists or criminals.īut over the past six years, NSO’s Pegasus spyware has turned up on the phones of activists, dissidents, lawyers, doctors, nutritionists and even children in countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. NSO did not immediately respond to inquiries on Monday. Krstić said.Īpple has said it plans to introduce new security defenses for iMessage, Apple’s texting application, in its next iOS 15 software update, expected later this year. “Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life and are used to target specific individuals,” Mr.

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