Benzinga -
- Citizen Lab researchers lauded Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone's Lockdown Mode feature for defending against notorious NSO Group spyware.
- In 2022, Apple launched a feature to protect journalists or human rights defenders against spyware.
- On Tuesday, the cybersecurity group's report analyzed three new zero-day exploits in iOS 15 and iOS 16, implying Apple's unawareness of the vulnerabilities at the time they targeted at least two Mexican human rights defenders, TechCrunch reports.
- Apple's feature blocked one of the three new zero-day exploits.
- Lately, Citizen Lab researchers said that the targets' iPhones blocked the hacking attempts and showed a notification saying Lockdown Mode prevented someone from accessing the phone's Home app.
- The researchers, however, believe that at some point, NSO's exploit developers succeed in finding a way to correct the notification issue, such as by fingerprinting Lockdown Mode.
- "The fact that Lockdown Mode seems to have thwarted, and even notified targets of a real-world zero-click attack shows that it is a powerful mitigation and is a cause for great optimism," Bill Marczak, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab and one of the authors of the report told TechCrunch.
- Apple spokesperson Scott Radcliffe acknowledged that Lockdown Mode disrupted this sophisticated attack and alerted users immediately, even before Apple and security researchers knew about the specific threat.
- Citizen Lab's report identified three different exploits which did not require any interaction by the target by analyzing several phones likely to have been hacked with NSO's spyware, also known as Pegasus.
- For years, researchers at Citizen Lab and others have documented several cases where NSO customers used the company's spyware to target journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition politicians.
- Price Action: AAPL shares traded lower by 0.57% at $165.52 on the last check Thursday.
- Photo by Torsten Dettlaff via Pexels