Apple slaps hard against ‘mercenary’ surveillance-as-a-service industry

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2022 06:17:00 -0700

Apple has struck a big blow against the mercenary “surveillance-as-a-service” industry, introducing a new, highly secure Lockdown Mode to protect individuals at the greatest risk of targeted attacks. The company is also offering millions of dollars to support research to expose such threats.

Starting in iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura, and available now in the latest developer-only betas, Lockdown Mode hardens security defenses and limits the functionalities sometimes abused by state-sponsored surveillance hackers. Apple describes this protection as “sharply reducing the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware.”

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FCC commissioner wants Apple, Google to remove TikTok from App Stores

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2022 05:34:00 -0700

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has written to Apple and Google to request that both companies remove the incredibly popular TikTok app from their stores, citing a threat to national security.

Is your data going TikTok?

Carr warns the app collects huge quantities of data and cited a recent report that claimed the company has accessed sensitive data collected from Americans. He argues that TikTok’s, “pattern of conduct and misrepresentations regarding the unfettered access that persons in Beijing have to sensitive U.S. data…puts it out of compliance,” with App Store security and privacy policies.

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Hermit spyware is deployed with the help of a victim’s ISP

Credit to Author: Jovi Umawing| Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2022 10:03:54 +0000

A new commercial spyware for governments, called Hermit, has spotted in the wild. It affects iOS and all Android versions.

The post Hermit spyware is deployed with the help of a victim’s ISP appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

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The surveillance-as-a-service industry needs to be brought to heel

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 09:40:00 -0700

Here we go again: another example of government surveillance involving smartphones from Apple and Google has emerged, and it shows how sophisticated government-backed attacks can become and why there’s justification for keeping mobile platforms utterly locked down.

What has happened?

I don’t intend to focus too much on the news, but in brief it is as follows:

  • Google’s Threat Analysis Group has published information revealing the hack.
  • Italian surveillance firm RCS Labs created the attack.
  • The attack has been used in Italy and Kazakhstan, and possibly elsewhere.
  • Some generations of the attack are wielded with help from ISPs.
  • On iOS, attackers abused Apple’s enterprise certification tools that enable in-house app deployment.
  • Around nine different attacks were used.

The attack works like this: The target is sent a unique link that aims to trick them into downloading and installing a malicious app. In some cases, the spooks worked with an ISP to disable data connectivity to trick targets into downloading the app to recover that connection.

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Italian spyware firm is hacking into iOS and Android devices, Google says

Credit to Author: Shweta Sharma| Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 08:51:00 -0700

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has identified Italian vendor RCS Lab as a spyware offender, developing tools that are being used to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities to effect attacks on iOS and Android mobile users in Italy and Kazakhstan.

According to a Google blog post on Thursday, RCS Lab uses a combination of tactics, including atypical drive-by downloads as initial infection vectors. The company has developed tools to spy on the private data of the targeted devices, the post said.

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Apple says it’s time your business ran BIMI

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2022 06:41:00 -0700

Apple will add another obstacle against successful phishing attacks in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura, which will show a company’s official logo to help recipients recognize genuine from fake emails.

Brand Indicators for Message Identification

Apple’s forthcoming operating systems will support Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). This is a specification to enable the use of brand-controlled logos within emails and will be a way to tell recipients that an email genuinely comes from the company concerned. Google has supported BIMI since 2021.

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Apple offers devs two useful enterprise security tools

Credit to Author: Ryan Faas| Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:00:00 -0700

Two sessions I attended at last week’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) — the Managed Device Attestation and Secure Endpoint sessions — highlight the company’s commitment to delivering increased capabilities for security tools. While both were naturally oriented more to developers of device management and security solutions than to end users or IT admins, some of the additional capabilities developers will be able to build into enterprise tools are noteworthy.

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