iPhone bug could let hackers into any Apple iOS device with just one tap

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The problem took advantage of three different weaknesses in Apple’s operating system, which together allowed people to take complete control of iOS devices, according to reports published Thursday by the San Francisco-based Lookout smartphone security company and internet watchdog group Citizen Lab. The reports issued by Lookout and Citizen Lab — based at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs — outlined how an iPhone could be completely compromised with the tap of a finger, a trick so coveted in the world of cyberespionage that in November a spyware broker said it had paid a $1 million dollar bounty to programmers who'd found a way to do it. Marczak, who'd already been looking into the NSO Group, said he and fellow-researcher John Scott-Railton turned to Lookout for help picking apart the malicious program, a process which Murray compared to "defusing a bomb." In a statement which stopped short of acknowledging that the spyware was its own, the NSO Group said its mission was to provide "authorized governments with technology that helps them combat terror and crime."