Hack Brief: Upgrade to iOS 9 to Avoid a Bluetooth iPhone Attack
If improved battery life and a smarter Siri aren't enough to convince you to upgrade to iOS 9, there's now another incentive to trade up sooner rather than later: To avoid having your iPhone wirelessly hijacked by any miscreant within Bluetooth range. Dowd's attack, which was first reported Wednesday morning by Forbes, takes advantage of not only the Airdrop bug in iOS but also a vulnerability that allows corporations to install their own custom apps on Apple's otherwise tightly restricted operating system. A full compromise of an iPhone would require also exploiting a vulnerability in iOS's kernel, too, though Dowd points out that those deeper operating system bugs are frequently released by the jailbreaking community that seeks to help iPhone owners install unauthorized apps. Who's Affected Apple has released a security update for both the Macbook and iPhone attacks, and anyone with the most recent OSX Yosemite or iPhone 8.4.1 should upgrade to avoid the attack. Stubborn Macbook owners who don't want to upgrade could alternatively disable Airdrop or their computer's Bluetooth feature altogether.
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