- cross-posted to:
- apple@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- apple@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmyf.uk/post/5813538
First ever iOS trojan discovered — and it’s stealing Face ID data to break into bank accounts
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Yes put you face and fingerprints and biometric data into our completely hackerproof devices, its very secure and not likely to have bad consequences at all!
- every phone manufacturer and banker in existence.
Ok, so not great, but not terrible.
Firstly you had to fall for social engineering to get the dodgy app via TestFlight. Later on, you had to fall for social engineering to get the dodgy app via you installing an MDM profile on your own device. In the future, you’ll doubtless be able to get socially engineered to sideload it.
Currently, in the UK (I don’t know what this is like in other countries), we get regular prompts from our banks not to share one-time codes with anyone, not even bank employees. And not to transfer money to ‘safe’ accounts, even if someone claiming to be the bank or the police tell you to. They’ll just need to update those to also say “We at Bank will never ask you to install test or special versions of our app, or update them anywhere other than the official Apple/Google app store”.
This is a social engineering problem, not really an iOS (or Android) technical one.
EDIT: The article is suspiciously vague one one point:
Once installed on either an iPhone or an Android phone, GoldPickaxe can collect facial recognition data, identity documents and intercepted text messages, all to make it easier to siphon off funds from banking and other financial apps. To make matters worse, this biometric data is then used to create AI deepfakes to impersonate victims and access their bank accounts.
What ‘facial recognition data’ is it gathering, and how? As I understand it, FaceID is processed in a secure enclave, and regular apps don’t have access to that - they send a ‘verify this person’ request, the phone itself triggers a FaceID scan, does the verification itself and sends back a ‘yes, all good’ reply to the app - the app itself does not get FaceID or biometric data. So unless it’s just doing something like using the camera to take some photos or videos of the user, I’d like to know what the article is talking about there…
Lazy journalism. The two variants showcases exactly how iOS is more secure and how much harder it is to get on the device as well as attempt to extract info.
Few quick points to answer questions outlined here:
- Android and iOS Variants behaves differently. Due to security measures (as outlined in this post itself) iOS variant cannot actually extract facial recognition data. Instead, it takes photos of user with prompts about shifting their face and blinking etc. The setup here is because Thailand’s central bank requires banks to perform facial recognition to withdraw larger sums of money. By stealing your face in multiple photos, they could build a deep fake of your face to be used in another device later.
- Due to the way security works on iOS, the iOS variant cannot exfiltrate SMS messages directly. There is simply no permission to do such. Instead, it tricks users into installing a SMS filtering extension “to prevent fraudulent SMS” — this allows attacker to read incoming SMS, but only from unknown numbers. The hopes here is that they could intercept your MFA received via SMS at a later date.
If anyone wants to do the full reading, it is available from Group-ib directly.
And yes, this further cements my thoughts about EU making a terrible move forcing Apple to enable side loading as it adds additional vectors for bad actors to get into a currently much more secure and harder to invade device.
If (when) this allows iOS Trojans through side loading you better believe that Apple will throw it all back at the EUs doorstep. I’m gonna howl how idiots thought it would make things “better”.
Of course many of those people that “want side loading” don’t give two craps about users. They just wanna see Apple knocked down a peg because of their sad little lives.
Wanna make things better in a way that gets my approval, kill all subscription models and just pay for genuine software updates that need to be justified through the new features they add.
This is a small taste of what sideloading will bring to all of your parents who own iOS devices!
I honestly can’t wait for the gong show to begin.
Just like the cookie law and GDPR before it, the intention might be good, but the implementation is so botched that it’s just going to be a huge mess.
Hope a couple of emulators and porn apps will be worth it for those that advocated for this crap.
Most of the advocates for it use Android instead anyway and aren’t likely to be impacted at all.
Android users are not forcing you or pushing for how Apple users use their phones. I don’t get where this adversarial stuff comes from. We already have this feature.
sideloading or not, you can just socially engineer vulnerable folks into installing trojans you your phone. as proven by this post.
there will always be a way regardless if you are stuck inside a competition-free walled garden or not.
MFA or not, you can always social engineer people into getting access into their bank account. There’s even SS7 attack for SMS based MFA. So, let’s just abolish passwords and MFA all together and everyone hold hands to sing Kumbaya and be hippies together… right? No, of course not. You do not weaken an established system because there’s ways for bad actors to act maliciously. Vast majority of Apple users doesn’t care for side loading and would benefit from the security that comes with the walled garden, very few Apple users (and the Lemmy user base does not a represent a statistically significantly broad representation of the user base) knows enough to care for otherwise, but are now getting dragged along for the ride.
Thats like blaming a knife for the users inability to understand you have to grip it by the handle.
That vast majority can continue using their phones as if nothing ever happened. Nobody is forcing them and more choice is good.
Even if they are not using the feature they will benefit from competition in the space. That’s the only sane way within capitalism. This far outweights the very small perceived risk a very small minority of users may or may not be subjected to the very same social engineering attack thats already being exposed by the article.
Its not us Lemmy or Android users pushing for this and dragging you along, we already have that feature, its fine. Its regulators wanting to mitigate the effects of a monopoly and this is benefical for the industry as a whole.
Again, you even said it yourself, most users can (and will) always keep the feature off anyway. Nobody is forced to use it and Apple will sure make it difficult anyway.
There are plenty of apps people are forced to install; apps used for international airport entries, apps that’s used by everyone professionally, or worse yet, that one state-owned chat app grandma uses back home because everyone else uses it around her. All it take is one of them deciding they don’t want to be part of the strict review process and that their ability to further spy on their users are worth the core technology fee, and now people would be forced to use third party app stores with questionable review process. The “scare screen” before they add the third party App Store? That’s just going to be another thing users blindly click through due to notification fatigue.
At least for the time being, the current proposal put forth, Apple should still theoretically be able to revoke apps from third party app stores, and they still retain entitlement (sandbox/low level hardware access) signing rights. Once those checks and balances are taken away… then all hell breaks loose and those not super tech savvy (read: 99%+) will be hurt the most. At least I am comfortable enough to look out for myself 🤷
the hackers used social engineering to persuade their victims into installing a Mobile Device Management (MDM) profile. For those unfamiliar, MDM is a methodology and set of tools used by a business’ IT department to manage company phones, computers and other devices. If a victim did fall for this new tactic, the end result was that the hackers now had complete control over their iPhone.
So when your IT person calls you up and asks you to install apps. Just say no.
Unless it’s not your device and was given to you by your company.
Iphone users crying in the comments intead of just growing a brain
