Hundreds of Millions of iPhones Can Be Hacked With a New Tool Found in the Wild

"A vast number of iOS users could have all of their personal data stolen simply for visiting a popular website. Hundreds of millions of people who are still using older Apple devices or older operating system versions remain vulnerable."

"iPhone hacking techniques have sometimes been described almost like rare and elusive animals: Hackers have used them so stealthily and carefully against such a small number of hand-picked targets that they're only rarely seen in the wild. Now a recent spate of espionage and cybercriminal campaigns has instead deployed those same phone-takeover tools, embedded in infected websites, to indiscriminately hack phones by the thousands."

"Researchers at Google and cybersecurity firms iVerify and Lookout on Wednesday jointly revealed the discovery of a sophisticated iPhone hacking technique known as DarkSword that they've seen in use on infected websites, capable of instantly and silently hacking iOS devices that visit those sites."

iPhone hacking techniques, previously used sparingly against select targets, are now deployed indiscriminately through infected websites to compromise thousands of devices. Researchers from Google, iVerify, and Lookout discovered DarkSword, a sophisticated technique capable of instantly hacking iOS devices that visit compromised sites. While it doesn't affect the latest iOS versions, it targets iOS 18 devices, which represented nearly a quarter of iPhones as of last month. This discovery follows the revelation of Coruna, another advanced hacking toolkit used by Russian state-sponsored groups. DarkSword, created by different developers, was also used by the same Russian espionage actors, putting hundreds of millions of older device users at significant risk of personal data theft.

Read at WIRED