Hackers Can Remotely Hack Your iPhone With A Simple Text Message
The tech giant Apple has a critical security flaw plugged into the latest version of iOS. Hackers can easily gain access remotely to the iPhone with just a simple text message and can identify the device passwords. So it will be much better if you own an iPhone, update it right now, as your iPhone may get hacked using three severe zero-days vulnerabilities. Yes, according to the sources, a very well-known Emirati human rights activist’s iPhone was hacked using one of the three severe zero-days vulnerability. Ahmed Mansoor is an internationally well-known Emirati human rights defender and recipient of the Martin Ennals Award. On August 10 and 11, 2016, the Emirati human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor received an SMS (text messages) on his iPhone which includes a link promising “new secrets” about the detainees who were tortured in UAE jails. Instead of clicking that link, internationally well-known Emirati human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor sent the messages to the researchers of Lookout and citizen lab. Later on investigating the message, the researchers of citizen lab and Lookout recognized that the links as belonging to an exploit infrastructure connected to NSO Group, an Israel-based “cyber war” company that sells government-exclusive lawful intercept spyware products which are known as Pegasus. However, if the well-known Emirati human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor had followed the link then definitely it would have jailbroken his device iPhone on the spot itself and may have implanted it with the malware that has the admin capabilities such as activating the microphone, logging the encrypted messages or secretly tracking its movements. NSO Group is an Israel-based “cyber war” company which is reportedly owned by an American venture capital firm known as Francisco Partners Management. Here’s the set of that three severe flaws:- CVE-2016-4657: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to arbitrary code execution CVE-2016-4655: An application may be able to disclose kernel memory CVE-2016-4656: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges However, after the detection of the flaws both the security companies Lookout and citizen lab immediately informed the tech giant Apple about the three severe flaws which they discovered. But, immediately after getting notified, Apple rolled out a patch update for the three zero-day exploits that were previously used by the attackers to hack the iPhone 6 of Ahmed Mansoor. The tech giant Apple said in a statement “We were made aware of this vulnerability and immediately fixed it with iOS 9.3.5,”. Later also added, “We advise all of our customers to always download the latest version of iOS to protect themselves against potential security exploits”. Furthermore, users of the iPhone are requested to update their iPhone or iPad to the latest version to avoid such attacks. But, if in case you are unable to update your device with the latest version of iOS, it is strongly recommended to the users to avoid clicking any suspicious or even trusted links until the device get updated with the latest patch update.
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