Home
Popular devices
Latest News
Latest Reviews
‘Most sophisticated’ iPhone attack chain ‘ever seen’ used four 0-days to create a 0-click exploit
Between 2019 and December 2022, an extremely advanced iMessage vulnerability was in the wild that was eventually named “Operation Triangulation” by security who discovered it. Now they’ve shared everything they know about the “most sophisticated attack chain” they’ve “ever seen.” Today at the Chaos Communication Congress, Kaspersky security researchers , , and gave a presentation covering Operation Triangulation. This marked the first time the three “publicly disclosed the details of all exploits and vulnerabilities that were used” in the advanced iMessage attack. The researchers also shared all of their work on the today. The has been called “one of the most technically sophisticated exploits.” And Operation Triangulation looks to be at a similarly scary level – Larin, Bezvershenko, and Kucherin have said “this is definitely the most sophisticated attack chain we have ever seen.” 0-day attack chain to 0-click iMessage exploit This vulnerability existed until iOS 16.2 was released in December 2022. Here’s the full complex attack chain including the four 0-days used to gain root privileges of a victim’s device: The researchers highlight that they’ve almost reverse-engineered “every aspect of this attack chain” and will be publishing more articles in 2024 going in-depth on each vulnerability and how it was used. But interestingly, Larin, Bezvershenko, and Kucherin note there is a mystery remaining when it comes to they’d like help with. Specifically, it’s not clear how attackers would have known about the hidden hardware feature: We are publishing the technical details, so that other iOS security researchers can confirm our findings and come up with possible explanations of how the attackers learned about this hardware feature. In conclusion, Larin, Bezvershenko, and Kucherin say that systems “that rely on ‘security through obscurity’ can never be truly secure.” If you would like to contribute to the project, you can find the technical details on .
Rate this article:
Share this article:
Leave a comment: