Historically, all Apple devices from Macs to iPhones have been able to boast of advanced protection from malwares and computer viruses even spams, well we can for now count out the iPhones and iPads from the protected lot a team from Georgia Tech. designed a charger that could hack into them in less than a minute!
This charger has been called a malicious charger and was named 'Mactans' by the team.. Ironically, Mactans is formed from the scientific name of the deadly black widow spider 'latrodectus mactans Latrodectus mactans'...*oops*
The team plans to demonstrate its findings at the Black Hat computer security conference, which begins July 27 in Las Vegas.
The team acknowledged Apple's plethora of defense mechanisms in iOS... below we find scraps of their presentation's preview
" On its mobile iOS operating system, Apple has created a "closed garden" environment in which everything from apps to accessories has to be approved by Apple, as opposed to Google's more wide-open Android system."
But by attacking in a
nontraditional way, the team of Billy Lau, Yeongjin Jang and Chengyu
Song say, those defenses can be bypassed.
"(W)e investigated the
extent to which security threats were considered when performing
everyday activities such as charging a device," they wrote. "The results
were alarming: despite the plethora of defense mechanisms in iOS, we
successfully injected arbitrary software into current-generation Apple
devices running the latest operating system (OS) software.
"All users are affected, as our approach requires neither a jailbroken device nor user interaction."
The team says they have
built a malicious charger named Mactans, which they plan to demonstrate
at Black Hat. Latrodectus mactans is the scientific name for the deadly
black widow spider.
The preview doesn't say whether the charger is a modified version of Apple's standard equipment or entirely new.
"While Mactans was built
with limited amount of time and a small budget, we also briefly
consider what more motivated, well-funded adversaries could accomplish,"
they wrote. "Finally, we recommend ways in which users can protect
themselves and suggest security features Apple could implement to make
the attacks we describe substantially more difficult to pull off."
We all are waiting for Apple's response as a lot of underground techies could capitalize on this discovery and *lo* we Apple users are susceptible to hacks! Apple we wait you!
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