{"id":78407,"date":"2016-08-29T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=78407"},"modified":"2016-08-26T14:10:15","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T13:10:15","slug":"update-your-iphone-or-ipad-israeli-cyber-spy-firm-can-hack-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/update-your-iphone-or-ipad-israeli-cyber-spy-firm-can-hack-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Update Your iPhone or iPad: Israeli Cyber-Spy Firm Can Hack You"},"content":{"rendered":"

25 Aug 2016 –<\/em> The much-talked-about hack that would allow governments to spy on your every move through your iPhone and iPad has become reality.<\/p>\n

Apple issued a security update for those devices Thursday [25 Aug] 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.<\/p>\n

\"Human<\/a>

Human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor shows Associated Press journalists a screenshot of a spoof text message he received in Ajman, United Arab Emirates today. Mansoor was recently targeted by spyware that can hack into Apple\u2019s iPhone.
ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p><\/div>\n

Researchers said spyware had never been found before this month that could \u201cjailbreak\u201d an iPhone or iPad and seize total control of its functions.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s pretty much nothing that this spyware couldn\u2019t get off the iPhone,\u201d said Bill Marczak, one of two researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto who discovered the spyware. \u201cIt\u2019s a total and complete compromise of the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The spyware\u2019s 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 cyber forensics company, Lookout, that joined Citizen Lab in the probe.<\/p>\n

The story of how the researchers uncovered the spyware and the evidence of its use is worthy of a spy novel itself.<\/p>\n

Marczak and a colleague, John Scott-Railton, began tracking the spyware, which they call the Trident exploit, after a human rights defender in the United Arab Emirates alerted researchers to suspicious text messages.<\/p>\n

The rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor, received a text message on his iPhone on the morning of Aug. 10. It said in Arabic: \u201cNew secrets about torture of Emiratis in state prisons,\u201d and contained a hyperlink to an unknown site. A similar text message arrived the next day.<\/p>\n

Mansoor was wary. He\u2019d already been targeted by other attempts. In all cases, the text messages were bait to get him to click on a link, which would have led to the infection of his Apple iPhone 6 and the control of the device through spying software created by NSO Group, a shadowy Israeli surveillance company, Marczak said.<\/p>\n

Marczak and his colleague infected a test iPhone of their own and \u201cwatched as unknown software was remotely implanted on our phone,\u201d the two said in a report. They then contacted Lookout to help in reverse-engineering the spyware.<\/p>\n

They quickly learned that the infection would have turned Mansoor\u2019s iPhone into a pocket undercover spy \u201ccapable of employing his iPhone\u2019s camera and microphone to eavesdrop on activity in the vicinity of the device, recording his WhatsApp and Viber calls, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps and tracking his movements.\u201d Viber is another common communications program.<\/p>\n

NSO Group, based in Herzliya, on the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv, was founded in 2010 and describes itself as a leader in \u201ccyber warfare\u201d and a vendor of surveillance software to governments around the world. It maintains no website and keeps a low profile.<\/p>\n

The Citizen Lab report said NSO Group had been sold to a San Francisco private equity group, Francisco Partners Management LLC, in 2014. A call of inquiry to that group led an NSO Group spokesman, Zamir Dahbash, to call McClatchy.<\/p>\n

He offered a statement that said the company\u2019s mission was \u201cto help make the world a safer place\u201d and that it sold only to authorized government agencies to help them \u201ccombat terror and crime.\u201d NSO Group does not operate any of its systems, he said, only selling the software.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe agreements signed with the company\u2019s customers require that the company\u2019s products only be used in a lawful manner. Specifically, the products may only be used for the prevention and investigation of crimes,\u201d Dahbash said.<\/p>\n

He would answer no further questions and would not confirm that the company had contracts with any agencies of the UAE government or with the government of Mexico, where another case emerged of efforts to infect iPhones with NSO spyware.<\/p>\n

As the researchers traced the activities of their own infected iPhone, it led to an infrastructure of some 200 websites and servers used by NSO Group. The team then punched in the internet addresses to Google and Twitter \u201cto see if anybody was sharing links to them,\u201d Marczak said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when they came across a tweet by Rafael Cabrera, a Mexican editor who works for Aristegui Online, a muckraking portal that has repeatedly broken stories on alleged influence trafficking by President Enrique Pena Nieto and his wife. Cabrera noted in the tweet that he\u2019d gotten a \u201cweird\u201d text message that seemed to bait him to click on a suspicious link.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized, oh my gosh, this guy received links which were connected to these websites that we connected to NSO Group,\u201d Marczak said.<\/p>\n

Cabrera, trapped in a traffic jam in Mexico City, said in a brief cellular phone interview that three members of Aristegui Online had been targeted with the text messages. In addition to himself, the portal\u2019s lead investigator, Daniel Lizarraga, and another prominent journalist, Salvador Camarena, received texts.<\/p>\n

All were on the team that in November 2014 revealed that Pena Nieto\u2019s wife had received a $7 million mansion from one of the government\u2019s biggest contractors. The team also took part, along with McClatchy and scores of other media outlets around the world, in the probe of the Panama Papers, the trove of documents from a Panamanian law firm that opened a window earlier this year on the murky world of offshore shell companies.<\/p>\n

Among the revelations from the documents was that the contractor who had built the mansion for the Mexican first lady had also sought to create a string of offshore trusts and companies to hide more than $100 million.<\/p>\n

Cabrera said he could not pin blame on who might have wanted to spy on his iPhone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t say if it was an individual or if it was the government,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n

The type of spyware sold by NSO Group routinely costs at least $1 million, according to a report by Lookout, making it a tool available mainly to governments.<\/p>\n

Apple Inc. was notified by Citizen Lab and Lookout on Aug. 15 of the vulnerability in the iPhones and iPads, and it said the security update provided Thursday blocked the use of Trident spyware.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe advise all of our customers to always download the latest version of iOS to protect themselves against potential security exploits,\u201d Apple spokesman Fred Sainz said in an email.<\/p>\n

But Marczak said Apple devices, like all others, faced an increasing onslaught from malware. \u201cNothing is hack-proof, really,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always ways into these devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

\u00a92016 McClatchy Washington Bureau <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 staradvertiser.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 [25 Aug] after researchers discovered spyware that allows remote operators to intercept all voice and data communications and pass along every photograph and video. The infection turns iPhone into a pocket undercover spy capable of employing iPhone\u2019s camera and microphone to eavesdrop on activity in the vicinity of the device, recording WhatsApp and Viber calls, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps and tracking movements. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}