

The Trojan, called Coldroot, can, among other things, log keystrokes and steal passwords. Still, there’s a high level of concern among privacy and security experts. “All of us who’re walking around with this vulnerability are in danger,” Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Forbes.īecause when it rains it pours, a researcher has sounded the alarm that a nasty remote access Trojan that targets MacOS has been around apparently for almost two years and isn’t detected by AV tools.
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In a follow-up Forbes article on Thursday, Cellebrite’s marketing chief sought to calm fears about his company’s ability to crack iOS security, saying “there’s nothing inherent in the technology that means it’s open to misuse.”

The situation also highlights the ongoing tug-of-war between tech vendors and law enforcement agencies, as the former resist watering down encryption on their products, while the latter argue they need access to devices and data for their investigations.
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“And if they haven’t discovered how to do it… well, they could always pay Cellebrite to do it for them.” Because if Cellebrite has found a way to do this, the ability could also potentially be found by others - including law enforcement agencies and dodgy authoritarian regimes,” wrote security analyst Graham Cluley. “Such a technique has ramifications for all users of Apple products.

In the meantime, the implications for the security and privacy of iPhone users are, needless to say, enormous, as are the concerns that whatever technique and knowledge Cellebrite may possess could fall into the hands of criminals, or be independently replicated by bad actors. Department of Homeland Security who received training from Cellebrite managed to extract data from a suspect’s iPhone X.Īpple has so far offered no commentary other than to say its customers should make sure they’re running the latest iOS version, which is 11.2.6, a version whose security Cellebrite claims it can circumvent. Cellebrite can’t (or won’t) crack devices remotely.įorbes also found a warrant that states that as part of an investigation, a research specialist from the U.S. The way it works is that customers ship the devices to Cellebrite, where its engineers work their magic.
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While Cellebrite isn’t publicly trumpeting this capability, anonymous sources told Forbes that in recent months the company “has developed undisclosed techniques to get into iOS 11 and is advertising them to law enforcement and private forensics folk across the globe.”Īs Forbes noted, Cellebrite has posted a brochure on its website where it details its ability to unlock these Apple products as well as several Android devices, and extract data from them. Oh, and Apple had to squash another one of those pesky bugs that let people crash iPhones via texting.įorbes dropped a news bomb on Monday when it reported that Cellebrite recently started telling its customers - which are primarily government, military and corporate investigative teams - that it’s able to unlock and extract data from devices running iOS 11, such the iPhone X, as well as other iPhones, iPads and iPods. A digital forensics vendor claimed having the ability to unlock all iPhone models, including the X, while a researcher warned about a Trojan targeting MacOs computers that’s not detected by anti-virus products. The second half of February was intense for Apple on the security front.

Apple under siege A digital forensics vendor claims it can crack iOS devices, including the iPhone X, pictured here. In addition, researchers warned about a new trend of using Memcached servers to significantly boost DDoS attacks, as GitHub became a victim of this new tactic. Apple has been all over InfoSec news in the past week or so, along with Spectre / Meltdown developments, a tax season scam alert from the feds, and an apparent solution to the Winter Olympics’ hack whodunit.
