ICT News South Africa

WikiLeaks unveils how Apple products have been hacked for years

NEWSWATCH: Yesterday, 23 March 2017, saw the release of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 "Dark Matter", a cache of documents which explains the techniques used by the CIA to gain 'persistence' on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones. The documents also demonstrate the use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.

It is reported that Vault 7 "Dark Matter" contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB).

According to WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, the organisation only published 1% of the information it has discovered.

Among others, these documents reveal the "Sonic Screwdriver" project which, as explained by the CIA, is a "mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting" allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick "even when a firmware password is enabled". The CIA's "Sonic Screwdriver" infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.

The press release states that "while CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organisation's supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise."

For more:

About Ilse van den Berg

Ilse is a freelance journalist and editor with a passion for people & their stories (check out Passing Stories). She is also the editor of Go & Travel, a platform connecting all the stakeholders in the travel & tourism industry. You can check out her work here and here. Contact Ilse through her website here.
Let's do Biz