Update Your iPhone or iPad: You Could be Hacked Tim Johnson - McClatchyDC
go to original August 26, 2016

Apple boosts iPhone security after hack on rights activist (Tekno Bin)

If you have an iPhone, stop what you're doing and update it to the latest operating system, iOS 9.3.5 (to do this, go to your Settings app, tap "General," and then "Software Update." Then tap "Download and Install").

The much-talked-about hack that would allow governments to spy on your every move through your iPhone and iPad has become reality.

Apple issued a security update for those devices Thursday after researchers discovered spyware that turns hand-held Apple devices into the mother of all snoops, allowing remote operators to intercept all voice and data communications and pass along every photograph and video.

Researchers said spyware had never been found before this month that could "jailbreak" an iPhone or iPad and seize total control of its functions.

Efforts to use the spyware have surfaced in Mexico and the United Arab Emirates, where critics of the government appear to have been targeted for surveillance.

"There's pretty much nothing that this spyware couldn't get off the iPhone," said Bill Marczak, one of two researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto who discovered the spyware. "It's a total and complete compromise of the phone."

Thursday's development is a hit on the reputation of Apple products as largely hack-proof, and it raises questions over whether the spyware is in widespread use by authoritarian governments around the world.

The Israeli company thought to have produced the spyware said in a statement that it insisted that governments that bought its products use them only in lawful ways. Coding in the spyware indicates it has been around since 2013.

The spyware's existence also calls into question the security of widely used encrypted communications programs such as WhatsApp and Telegram, both of whose contents can be intercepted on a compromised device before they are scrambled, according to a San Francisco cyberforensics company, Lookout, that joined Citizen Lab in the probe.

The story of how the researchers uncovered the spyware and the evidence of its use is worthy of a spy novel itself.

Read the rest at Duluth News Tribune

Related: Apple Vulnerability Is Surprising, But Journalists Should Stick with iPhones (CPJ.org)

Related: US Congress Urged to Investigate Security Concerns Raised by Apple Flaws Used by ‘Digital Arms Dealers’ (The Washington Times)

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