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Security Flaw in iMessage: Affected 37 Journalists in a Year

Security flaws are sadly the order of the day and can affect numerous services. For instance iMessage has been the last one of which a vulnerability has been understood that affected 37 reporters. This has ended up triggering these specialists to have been spied on by the federal government, violating flexibility of expression.

Governments spy on journalists through iMessage

The failure that was present in iMessage went undetected by everybody, given that it was virtually a year without patching. Specifically, it started to occur on computers that had iOS 13.5.1 set up but it is possible that it was also transferred to other greater versions. Everything shows that this attack was orchestrated by the United Arab Emirates versus national media. It is known by all that these kinds of nations do not shine for their democracy as we have formerly commented. All this was performed through software developed by the Israeli business NSO Group.

The emphasize of all is that this make use of is zero-day, so users were uninformed of what was occurring on their iPhones. This exploit might just be started at the moment of getting a text that in the beginning could be something totally harmless. That is why the contaminated iPhone started to publish big quantities of info such as call, picture gallery, passwords or area to the network. All of this might be used to keep journalists or executives from large chains under control at all times. Since it was a fairly subtle attack it is partly rational that it might not be patched up until months later on.

As of iOS 14 it appears that it is no longer possible to run this exploit in the iMessage application. From the Cupertino business the only thing they wanted to explain is that the current version of the operating system must always be set up. In this method you can make the most of all the security patches that are being consisted of and that for the user can go undetected.

No service leaves security defects

It is clear that when you have a mobile phone in your hands, you can suffer an attack by a hacker. We see that virtually no service is delivered. IMessage is owned by Apple and works carefully with iOS code, it does not imply that it is totally immune to attacks. The Apple os, as we have seen over the last couple of months, also has some security holes that can be exploited to steal sensitive info. And all of it actually begins with something that is harmless in the beginning, such as a basic SMS, as has actually occurred in this case.

You must always remember that you should never open any kind of file that is from an unknown source or links to websites that have not been validated. Regardless of being on an Apple operating system, this is not exempt from all the repercussions that a cyberattack can have.

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