Posted on 08/25/2016 10:35:00 AM PDT by Swordmaker
PARIS (AP) -- Apple says it is issuing a security update after powerful espionage software was found targeting an activist's iPhone in the Middle East.
Computer forensics experts tell The Associated Press the spyware takes advantage of three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple's mobile operating system to take complete control of iPhone handsets.
Two reports published Thursday by the San Francisco-based Lookout and internet watchdog group Citizen Lab outline how the spyware could compromise an iPhone with the tap of a finger, a trick so coveted in the world of cyberespionage that one spyware broker said last year that it had paid a $1 million dollar bounty to programmers who'd found a way to do it.
Apple said in a statement that it fixed the vulnerability immediately after learning about it.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Before anyone jumps on that, I have shot that down hundreds of times. I am not now, nor have I ever been, employed by Apple or any of their agents, advertising agencies, or any business associated with Apple. I am only the keeper of the FreeRepublic Apple Ping list of over 750 Freepers who, of their own free will have asked me to keep them notified about things pertinent to their chosen computers and devices and the company.
Didn't mean *you* worked for Apple.
You work for us dude! And I appreciate it.
You have been asked several times why you keep posting just Apple threads and never where you stand on politics.
Then seeing as you like to jump and butt in then I suggest you read my past posts over the years.
I know that, but some of the Apple Hate Brigade would latch onto it and go to town with it. LOL!
Andrew
And AGAIN you troll. . . You are the one butting in this entire thread, manc. You are the one acting rudely. YOU are discussing ME, so it is indeed proper for me to comment.
Then I am talking to you and asking you a question. It is that simple.
So are the polls to be believed, are you supporting Trump, WHat you say about the border?
Done. Thank you!
This is an open thread for opinions.
I'm sharing mine as a member here.
You have no private conversations posted openly.
There is a Private Email access for private conversations.
Well I have stated my opinion, but we all know what opinions are.
Hey. Open forum. You have a right to post.
well thank you
I’m trying to understand your post and its relevance to the security patch. Has a political campaign been penetrated using the patched item?
One thing you don’t seem to have considered: FR is an Internet Web Site. A defining characteristic of such being that you gotta have an Internet connection and a computer (and an iPhone or an iPad is a computer) in order to communicate with it. Right there, you have a commonality of interest. Among all FReepers.I switched from a Wintel to a Mac not too long after the advent of OS X. Knowing that OS X was unix based (and now is officially Unix™). And knowing that Unix was an industrial-strength multiuser, multitasking OS. Whereas DOS and Windows, being single-user and initially designed on the assumption that the owner had complete control of what went in his machine, was not industrial grade. The Internet became the killer app, and that was the death knell to the conceit that the user was in complete control of what went into his machine. Thus, viruses. And phishing attacks.
I personally fell for a phishing attack once, and the experience convinced me that I needed security against viruses. And yet AV software was a royal pain. And not convincingly secure, so I would always be vulnerable to a phishing attack if it claimed that I had a virus. Always, unless I got an industrial strength OS. Enter OS X. Is it impossible that my faith in OS X will lead me astray? Definitely possible. But it is the least naive assumption I know how to make. So I live with it. Swordmaker gets into the weeds with the arcana of this stuff, and his postings here on Apple strike me as a public service.
I forgot to mention that this malware requires the user to install the software found at a NON-Apple website. It is NOT installable remotely nor is it found on the Apple App Store. It is a TROJAN that would start this running on one’s iPhone, iPad, or iPad touch.
It takes industrial strength stupid to install something you find in a email or in a message that someone sends you and says “Hey, I think you’ll like this!”
bump
bump
I have made my views known on both those subjects on political threads on FreeRepublic, some I initiated and some I am merely commenting on.
This thread is NOT a political thread, but you are attempting to hijack it by your snarky and rude behavior, troll.
I do not need to respond to your third degree interrogation, and will not. I have answered your and other's questions on Apple postings MULTIPLE TIMES BEFORE as I have told you, yet you persist in asking them over and over to harass people on these threads. YOU are rude in your responses to others who post here. That makes you the troll. Give it a rest.
I asked YOU some direct questions which you ignored and did not answer. Did you bother to read the article before you jumped in to post? Do you think that pointing out a "VULNERABILITY" in iOS is "pumping" Apple, promoting it? Answer the questions, manc.
All that writing and yet you did not answer.
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