Apple Security Under Cyber Attacks

Ransomware Attacks

There is a common misconception out there that Apple devices are immune to cyber attacks. Historically, Apple has never been as targeted due to the low population of users compared to Microsoft. Of course, this has changed with the high population of iPhone users today. On the other hand Mac operating system still only accounts for less than 10% of the OS user population. In March 2016 news of Apple ransomware attacks have given a lot of Mac users a wake-up call. The attack was engineered through an infected copy of Transmission which is a free Mac BitTorrent client. Ransomware encrypts or hijacks your device demanding money to have access to your files again.

Serious iOS and MacOS Vulnerabilities

After the ransomware attacks, a major vulnerability was also recently discovered on iOS. It all started with Ahmed Mansoor a world famous human rights defender who lives in the United Arab Laureate. On August 10th, 2016 he received a series of text messages asking to click on a link promising information about tortured prisoners. Ahmed reported the link to Citizen Lab researchers who determined that the link would have jailbroken his iPhone and installed spyware. The attack was connected to the Israeli company NSO Group.

This sophisticated spyware attack known as Pegasus can access all the information on your iOS device. It allows reading emails, text messages, passwords, photos, listening to phone calls and accessing contact lists. It is also capable of reading any information you have on any of your installed apps. The threat is highly configurable and extremely hard to detect. Even after an iOS update the threat remains and can update itself to use new exploits. The architecture of iOS and MacOS are so similar that they both share the same issues.

What is Apple Doing About It?

As far as the ransomware, Apple was able to catch it early on. Only 6000 copies of the infected Transmission software were downloaded. Transmission removed the infected copy of the software and released a new updated version. The updated version automatically removes ransomware from the infected MacOS computers. Now as a security measure against Pegasus Apple has released iOS update 9.3.5. There is also update 2006–001 for El Capitan and security update 2006–005 for Yosemite along with Safari 9.1.3. The security updates are supposed to take care of the undetectable Pegasus spying tool. What we should all take away from all of these attacks is that no operating system or software is bullet proof. Our privacy is constantly being challenged by bad actors out there and we should always be on the look out.