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Many people’s understanding of mobile phone security risks is still very simple. We always feel that as long as you don’t click on the suspicious link and don’t download the phishing software, it will be all right. But life is always invincible, even if you use the iPhone: now the criminals can only send a message to your iMessage, you can black into your phone.

No interaction vulnerability

At the Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday, Natalie Silvanovich, a researcher at Google’s Project Zero project, presented a series of “None Interaction-less vulnerability.

The scary thing about “no interaction vulnerability” is that even if you don’t do anything on your phone, there is a risk of being hacked. In May of this year, WhatsApp had such a vulnerability, no need for user response, hackers can also invade their mobile phones by making phone calls.

At first, researcher Natalie tried to find similar vulnerabilities in SMS, MMS, and visual voicemail, and basically no gains. Later, she tried to analyze iMessage, but I did not expect to make a big discovery.

Is it attacked without doing anything?

Natali found a series of “no interactive vulnerabilities” in iMessage that allow criminals to remotely execute malicious code and read user data. One of the vulnerabilities is particularly peculiar. The attacker sends a specially crafted message to the target user, and the iMessage server sends back specific data, such as the user’s text message or picture. This kind of attack is too powerful and can even be achieved without the user opening iMessage. Although iOS has protection against similar attacks, it exploits the underlying logic of the system and can fool iOS’s layer protection.

But why does iMessage have this problem? This may be because it is a platform that is too complex. It can publish emotional packages, photos and videos, as well as third-party app access to connect your phone to large and small applications. These extensions and associations actually increase the risk of being attacked.

Natali said that iMessage’s overall security is strong, but this vulnerability is a design-level issue. Programs such as iMessage have many features, and each library used by developers becomes an additional attack surface. Apple is certainly not the only developer with such problems.

“This may be a problem that has been overlooked in the security field. We tend to be more concerned with the implementation of encryption protection measures, but if the application at the receiving end has a problem, the encryption technology will not do well,” Natalie said.

What should I do? Upgrade to keep you safe!

A vulnerability that leaks information without user action is undoubtedly worthwhile. Once released, “No Interaction Vulnerabilities” on iOS has attracted much attention on the black market. According to media reports, similar to the vulnerabilities announced by Google this time, the price of each item may exceed $1 million, and the total value of these vulnerabilities may even be as high as $10 million.

Nattaly pointed out that such loopholes are almost ubiquitous. In the past year, she has found similar problems in WhatsApp, FaceTime and the video conferencing protocol webRTC.

How can I protect myself from “no cross-attack”? The answer is to update the phone operating system and applications as soon as possible. Apple has fixed six iMessage vulnerabilities proposed by Natalie in the recently released iOS 12.4 and Mac OS 10.14.6. In addition, developers should also troubleshoot such errors in their code. Once an attack against “no interaction vulnerability” occurs, malicious messages and calls will flood in, and users will not be able to fight back.

Reference source: https://www.wired.com/story/imessage-interactionless-hacks-google-project-zero/