| Cult of Mac

iOS 14.5 makes zero-click iPhone attacks even more difficult

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If hackers dump your personal data onto the dark web, you need to know about it. Dashlane Dark Web Monitoring can sound the alarm.
“Dammit, Apple keeps breaking all my best zero-click attacks.”
Photo: sebastiaan stam/Pexels CC

The next iOS version will make it more difficult for hackers to break into iPhones. Security researchers digging around in Apple’s beta code for iOS 14.5 found that the company began encrypting pointer authentication codes, which will make zero-click attacks far tougher to pull off.

Intego Mac Premium Bundle X9’s powerful solutions secure your Mac

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Mac Premium Bundle X9 protects your computer from online threats with five apps.
Mac Premium Bundle X9 safeguards your precious computer.
Image: Intego

This Mac security post is presented by Intego.

Macs have a reputation for being less vulnerable than PCs to online threats like malware and viruses, but your machine is certainly not invulnerable. Far from it, actually. It can pay to invest in a suite of security apps like those in Intego Mac Premium Bundle X9 to protect your Mac from a variety of online threats.

Watch Mac OS X Leopard running on 2020 iPad Pro

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ipad
You've never seen an iPad Pro like this.
Photo: Hacking Jules

Running OS X on a tablet was a pipe dream for many Apple fans long before the iPad came out. Now that the iPad Pro has a processor that can compete with desktop CPUs, that pipe dream is almost a reality.

YouTuber Jules Gerard managed to get Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 running on his new 2020 iPad Pro without jailbreaking the device. Jules turned to the UTM emulator to show off how fast the old Mac operating system can run on the iPad Pro. Everything works shockingly well, including the built-in apps and Microsoft Office.

Prepare to be amazed:

Hacker who tried to extort Apple for $100k is spared prison

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Hacker who tried to extort Apple for $100k is spared prison
Kerem Albayrak sent Apple messages demanding a ransom.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

A hacker who tried to extort Apple into paying him $75,000 in Bitcoin or a thousand $100 iTunes gift cards has been spared prison.

22-year-old IT analyst Kerem Albayrak, from London, claimed that he could leak passwords or carry out factory resets for devices attached to 382 million iCloud accounts. He was 19 at the time that he committed his crimes under the name “Turkish Crime Family.”

Researchers trick Face ID with modified glasses

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Facial Recognition
Face ID won‘t unlock your iPhone if you're unconscious. Glasses can trick the sensors, though.
Image: Apple

One of the advantages of Face ID over Touch ID is that the person unlocking their iPhone must be awake. However, researchers found a way to fool Apple’s facial recognition system into thinking someone is conscious when they weren’t — using modified glasses.

This method does not allow a hacker to trick an iPhone into misidentifying one person as another. But it still could prove problematic for Face ID.

Teen who hacked Apple thought it would earn him a job

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hacking pic
This was the second teenager in Australia to hack Apple's secure servers.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

A second Australian teenager who hacked into Apple’s computer systems has said that he did it because he thought it would help earn him a job at Apple.

The unnamed teen was 13 when he hacked into Apple’s mainframe. Now 17 years old, he recently plead guilty to multiple computing hacking charges in an Adelaide Youth Court.

Hacker knits Mac ROM scarves to boot up your fashion game

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Mac ROM scarves
Code to keep your neck warm.
Photo: KnitYak

You could safely assume that computer hackers and people who knit have little to talk about. One activity is clearly analog and seemingly old-fashioned while the other pre-occupies the mind of a tech geek.

Fabienne Serriere blows up that assumption by being both. She combines the two rather different activities to make eye-catching scarves imprinted with Mac ROM code.

Guilty iCloud hacker sent to slammer

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Celebgate hack
Christopher Brannan gets a prison sentence for his part in the crime.
Illustration: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

A judge sentenced a former high school teacher to 34 months in prison Friday after the man pleaded guilty to his role in the “Celebgate” hack of iCloud and other accounts.

Of those convicted for the high-profile hack, Christopher Brannan, 31, received the harshest sentence for breaching accounts. The attack led to the circulation of nude photos and videos of model Kate Upton, actress Jennifer Lawrence and others.

iPhone hacking tools sell for as little as $100 on eBay

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Cekkebrite
One of Cellebrite's hacking devices.
Photo: Tryc2/ebay

The Cellebrite hacking tool used by law enforcers for pulling data off locked iPhones costs $6,000 new. However, used units now show up on eBay for as little as $100.

That’s a big discount from the full price. And it seems that Cellebrite, a security firm based in Israel, isn’t too happy about the situation — with very good reason.

‘Highly plausible’ Apple servers could be infected with spy chips, says former Apple hardware engineer

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Instrumental founder and CEO Anna Katrina Shedletsky
Instrumental founder and CEO Anna Katrina Shedletsky, who is using her experience as an Apple product design engineer to bring AI to manufacturing.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Despite Apple’s denials, it’s “highly plausible” that secret spy chips could have been planted on the company’s servers, said a former Apple hardware engineer.

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, who spent nearly six years at Apple helping build several generations of iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch, said spy chips could have been slipped into the design of servers used for Apple’s iCloud services, as alleged in a Bloomberg Businessweek story.

“With my knowledge of hardware design, it’s entirely plausible to me,” she said. “It’s very highly plausible to me, and that’s scary if you think about it.”