hoodlum
MuscleHead
- Jan 3, 2012
- 903
- 172
I thought I would write this up to help open the eyes about how broad security threats are and that they can come in all shapes and sizes and users need to be ever-vigilant if they want to stay safe. This attack is current and if you have an iPhone then you are at risk. This is a new style of attack demostrated at Blackhat 2013 and was a driving force behind one of the security implementations in iOS 7. The researchers were able to inject malicious code which is completely invisible to the user and does not create an icon.
Abstract:
"The results were alarming: despite the plethora of defense mechanisms in iOS, we successfully injected arbitrary software into current-generation Apple devices running the latest iOS software. All users are affected, as our approach requires neither a jailbroken device nor user interaction."
The interesting thing is that the injected malware doesn't have root privileges because it is forced to run inside Apple's sandbox protection (the same as a user downloaded app such as Facebook) however it has a very unique characteristic as it is able to call private API's (like telephony) that are usually protected and this creates an even bigger problem than a user-installed malicious program normally would as they can get more creative and use some techniques which jailbroken users would normally use to disguise their actions. There was an attempt from Apple to patch some of the security flaws that this targets however they are easily bypassed.
MACTANS: Injecting Malware into iOS Devices via Malicious Chargers
Authors: Billy Lau, Yeongjin Jang and Chengyu Song
Presented at: Blackhat 2013
Direct Link: https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US...nto-iOS-Devices-via-Malicious-Chargers-WP.pdf
Abstract:
"The results were alarming: despite the plethora of defense mechanisms in iOS, we successfully injected arbitrary software into current-generation Apple devices running the latest iOS software. All users are affected, as our approach requires neither a jailbroken device nor user interaction."
The interesting thing is that the injected malware doesn't have root privileges because it is forced to run inside Apple's sandbox protection (the same as a user downloaded app such as Facebook) however it has a very unique characteristic as it is able to call private API's (like telephony) that are usually protected and this creates an even bigger problem than a user-installed malicious program normally would as they can get more creative and use some techniques which jailbroken users would normally use to disguise their actions. There was an attempt from Apple to patch some of the security flaws that this targets however they are easily bypassed.
MACTANS: Injecting Malware into iOS Devices via Malicious Chargers
Authors: Billy Lau, Yeongjin Jang and Chengyu Song
Presented at: Blackhat 2013
Direct Link: https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US...nto-iOS-Devices-via-Malicious-Chargers-WP.pdf