The security reputation of iOS, once considered the world's most hardened mainstream operating system, has taken a beating over the past month: Half a dozen interactionless attacks that could take over iPhones without a click were revealed at the Black Hat security conference. Another five iOS exploit chains were exposed in malicious websites that took over scores of victim devices. Zero-day exploit brokers are complaining that hackers are glutting the market with iOS attacks, reducing the prices they command.
As Apple prepares for its iPhone 11 launch on Tuesday, the recent stumbles suggest it's time for the company to go beyond fixing the individual security flaws that have made those iPhone attacks possible, and to instead examine the deeper issues in iOS that have produced those abundant bugs. According to iOS-focused security researchers, that means taking a hard look at two key inroads into an iPhone's internals: Safari and iMessage.
While vulnerabilities in those apps offer only an initial foothold into an iOS device—a hacker still has to find other bugs that allow them to penetrate deeper into the phone's operating system—those surface-level flaws have nonetheless helped to make the recent spate of iOS attacks possible.
"If you want to compromise an iPhone, these are the best ways to do it," says independent security researcher Linus Henze of the two apps. Henze gained notoriety as an Apple hacker after revealing a macOS vulnerability known as KeySteal earlier this year. He and other iOS researchers argue that when ..
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