iPhone zero-click Wi-Fi exploit is one of the most breathtaking hacks ever

[OneMoreThing...]

Enlarge / That's a lot of screen. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device—over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and exploits were wormable—meaning radio-proximity exploits could spread from one near-by device to another, once again, with no user interaction needed.

This Wi-Fi packet of death exploit was devised by Ian Beer, a researcher at Project Zero, Google’s vulnerability research arm. In a 30,000-word post published on Tuesday afternoon, Beer described the vulnerability and the proof-of-concept exploit he spent six months developing single handedly. Almost immediately, fellow security researchers took notice.

Beware of dodgy Wi-Fi packets

“This is a fantastic piece of work,” Chris Evans, a semi-retired security researcher and executive and the founder of Project Zero, said in an interview. “It really is pretty serious. The fact you don’t have to really interact with your phone for this to be set off on you is really quite scary. This attack is just you’re walking along, the phone is in your pocket, and over Wi-Fi someone just worms in with some dodgy Wi-Fi packets.”

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[Slydude]

Even though the bug discussed in this article has been patched for some time, it's still an interesting read.

 

[chscag]

Total BS and fantasy. Some egghead researcher finds another hack. Big deal. Very unlikely to happen to you. Just another way to fleece Apple out of $$.

 

[Slydude]

It's always amazing how often these articles are written/posted weeks or months after Apple has already patched the vulnerability.

 

[pm-r]

It's always amazing how often these articles are written/posted weeks or months after Apple has already patched the vulnerability.

I would think that most would be thankful that some have some ethics and did not release the information to the public before Apple had been informed and a patch or fix had been created.


- Patrick
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[markbyrn]

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