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With the spate of recent hacking attacks recently, with Russia being one of the major alleged perpetrators of some, it almost doesn’t seem surprising when Israel joined in. NSO Group, an Israeli company, has reportedly created hacking tools to exploit vulnerabilities in “iPhone 6” units in order to gain access to them. Once the phone becomes infected, everything from text messages to emails becomes visible to the hackers.
The vulnerabilities and hacking trends were discovered by a security firm called Lookout as well as Citizen Lab this Thursday. According to their reports, the hackers send targets a text message containing a link. Once the target clicks on the link, their phone’s security becomes compromised.
Both groups informed Apple of their discovery, which then prompted the company to release an OS update called “iOS 9.3.5.” All iPhone 6 users are advised to update their devices to the latest OS in order to prevent hackers from gaining access to their phones through this newest attempt by the Israeli company.
Speaking to Business Insider, an Apple spokesperson confirmed the vulnerability and assured that the company has already come up with a fix.
"We were made aware of this vulnerability and immediately fixed it with iOS 9.3.5," the spokesperson said. "We advise all of our customers to always download the latest version of iOS to protect themselves against potential security exploits."
It would seem that the hacking tools have existed for months, MacWorld reports, allowing hackers to exploit vulnerabilities to gather information on certain individuals. Fortunately, older versions of the iOS 9 were not as widely exploited to the point of targeting specific users.
According to Citizen Lab, their discovery is unique in the world of jailbreakers selling vulnerabilities to the highest bidder, as it was used sparingly and only against high-value targets. These hacking tools can be costly, sometimes going for as high as $8 million to use according to Lookout, which speaks to the value of their results and how worried “iPhone 6” users should be.
