Urgent ~ can someone track your iPhone?

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#3302881 29-Oct-2024 18:50

maclongshanks: @tieke

We had a person say here that they were able to give data from the Mail app to the police that helped find their family member's iPad when it was stolen.
Obviously I had to find out how that works, if it was useful enough to find their iPad.

Mail logs are on the service providers servers, so no way the person you speak of could provide any information given they have no access to those servers.

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#3303164 30-Oct-2024 13:09

maclongshanks: They're into IT etc and know people who are too.
We need to prevent any ways they could potentially track 🐾🙏🏽

Ultimately, if there has been threatening behavior the police are the best people to deal with that.

The vast majority of these types are cowardly bullies only for so long as they think they are getting away with it.

A visit or phone call from the police questioning the statements they have made or behavior they did tends to sort out their warped behavior rapidly and you will never hear from them again. That is an additional community benefit if they try it on someone else there is more likelyhood they will be stopped faster.

maclongshanks

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#3303194 30-Oct-2024 14:26

Bung , Spyware

Thank you so much for that :) That's great to know 🐾🙏🏽

@gzt

Thank you very much :)
There hasn't been threatening behaviour as yet. Just things that have been said.
We're prepared though if anything progresses 🐾🙏🏽

cddt

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#3303280 30-Oct-2024 16:00

maclongshanks:

...

A few things that are being overlooked by some people, are we have a very tech savvy person who has said they can easily get into smart phones.
From our position we have no idea if that's true or not. They were very confident about it. Obviously we had to find out everything about that.
...
tieke has referred to 'extremely unlikely edge cases'. From that it seems there are people out there who can do things that are not the most common methods.

No one should be making any assumptions about what anyone could be capable of. You don't know what any person could decide to do.
No one knows if this person could be an 'edge case'. We don't know, and neither do you.
You don't know what knowledge they do or don't have.
...

With all due respect, look at it like this. Back in 2016 the FBI were unable to unlock the phone of the San Bernardino terrorist. Eventually the FBI paid US$1,300,000 to a professional hacking company to unlock the iPhone 5C. The exploit only worked against that version of the iPhone. Smartphones have only become more secure since then.

If someone could truly "easily get into smart phones" in 2024 then their knowledge is worth tens of millions of dollars on both the white and black markets. It's so implausible as to be absurd.

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maclongshanks

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#3303366 30-Oct-2024 17:48

Thank you for that. Yeah I definitely hear that.
It seems like there are 2 different things we're looking at. With some overlap between but basically 2 things.
Yes people have explained about how hard it is to 'get into' iPhones.

With tracking, as in my post you quoted from, we've had 2 people say in the thread that the methods that have been covered here will 'pretty much stop non sophisticated trackers'.
And should cover 'basically every standard scenario.'

As I've said, what then can sophisticated trackers do, and what are the non standard scenarios?

From my position not knowing what is or isn't possible there, I have no idea what these are, or who is able to get the skills or tools to do them.

I understand completely if people don't want to go into that. Just that those are what our remaining questions are about 🐾🙏🏽

Oblivian

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#3303370 30-Oct-2024 18:11

If they're not going to be accepting apps with the ability built in. Or allowing permissions to do so. Then it just won't be happening. Answered

Anything else requires the NSA/NZSIS and warrants to engage Apple.

And anyone claiming to do so, is only after your money.

Another member mentioned social engineering. That's where it's at now. The only measure is via social engineering.
https://netsafe.org.nz/online-safety-at-home/apps-using-them-safely

Eva888

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#3303375 30-Oct-2024 18:28

@maclongshanks As you admit, your tech knowledge is minimal, therefore even someone with only a slightly better knowledge than yours may appear like a tech genius to you and this person you are scared of sounds to be the latter and also a clever liar attempting to instil fear. If he’s that smart, he also knows the extent of the law.

You have privacy laws in this country plus laws against harassment. I suggest you stop worrying so much, trust the laws that protect you and when and if your safety or privacy is actually breached, then report this problem to police. You have all the power while this perpetrator threatening you does not.

Ignore and do not communicate any more with him. He/she is the potential criminal that will face consequences and knows this. Ignore, stop worrying and take it easy otherwise you are playing the game he is controlling.

Your Apple phone has more than enough protection once you change your access password and use two factor authentication, then relax.

https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/iphone/iphd709a3c46/ios

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#3304335 2-Nov-2024 13:42

There is actually a built-in backdoor to all A12+ iPhones - XS thru 15. Identified by Kaspersky Labs whose identification, investigation, dissemination, reconstruction & reporting of the entire chain is an exemplary of elite infosec skills. Dubbed Operation Triangulation, it appears that the NSA commanded Apple to install an undocumented hardware feature into iPhones that allowed - through an incredibly sophisticated chain of events triggered by an invisible iMessage - full root level priveledges, turning any iPhone into a zombie spy device. The only obvious tell was that OTA upgrades would fail - because they'd wipe the Operation Triangulation malware from the device. If you upgraded by iTunes or 3U Tools the NSA would simply send another invisible iMessage. For a chilling indicator of how deep this operation ran, try searching for "iphone OTA upgrades won't install" or similar - hundreds of thousands of results. Maybe not all are caused by Triangulation, but Apple doesn't provide a solution.

At the very same time as they were implementing this spyware attack on any chosen iPhone user anywhere in the world, the US government was banning Huawei over the possibility of spyware that they are yet to find.

Operation Triangulation is written up here: https://securelist.com/operation-triangulation-the-last-hardware-mystery

The point I'm making is that it takes a nation state level actor to even just finance such a thing as "can anyone track your iPhone" let alone the skills to conceive the pathway & the authority to command Apple to do what they promised they never would. If not for FAAFO when you attack security researchers phones, the program would still be a massive secret success today. Yes, it is possible. No, it's not possible for any organization other than the boss agency of America's spy agencies.

Ruphus

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#3304350 2-Nov-2024 14:47

1024kb: ...it appears that the NSA commanded Apple to install an undocumented hardware feature into iPhones..

@1024kb: Thanks for the info. I'm reading more into the exploit and the vulnerabilities now. Can you post a credible source for this statement?

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#3304377 2-Nov-2024 16:33

@1024kb Operation Triangulation was a targeted cyberattack that took advantage of a hardware bypass. Russian security services are the only ones attributing this to the "NSA backdoor."

I would take an accusation coming from the Russian security services as disinformation unless an independent third party can corroborate it.

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#3304408 2-Nov-2024 18:23

maclongshanks: As I've said, what then can sophisticated trackers do, and what are the non standard scenarios?

If someone has had unrestricted access to the physical device unlocked then the best advice is reset it from scratch and install only the things you actually need.

1024kb

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#3304601 2-Nov-2024 23:30

Ruphus:
1024kb: ...it appears that the NSA commanded Apple to install an undocumented hardware feature into iPhones..

@1024kb: Thanks for the info. I'm reading more into the exploit and the vulnerabilities now. Can you post a credible source for this statement?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWNUUldBEE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Triangulation

"Kaspersky has not made any official statements about the origin of the attack, nor has it attributed it to any hacker group or country.

However, on June 1, 2023, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) issued a statement about the discovery of malware affecting Apple mobile phones, using "software vulnerabilities provided by the manufacturer". The FSB also directly accused Apple of collaborating with the NSA. The statement indicated that several thousand phones were infected, including those outside Russia in NATO countries, the post-Soviet space, Israel, Syria and China.[24][25]

Apple issued a statement on the same day, denying these accusations.

In July–August 2023, it became known that the use of Apple smartphones and tablets for official purposes was banned in several Russian governmental and commercial organizations, including the Ministry of Digital Development, Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Transport, Federal Tax Service and Russian Railways. Later in 2023, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Emergency Situations took the same decision.

In September 2023, it was revealed that the Chinese government had decided to expand its ban on iPhone use to include not only government employees but also state-controlled companies.

In 2024, South Korea's Ministry of National Defense announced a ban on iPhones for security reasons, while Android phones were not banned.

The exploit code in Operation Triangulation has been called the most complex in history.

The most remarkable features of the attack are the attackers' knowledge of undocumented Apple chip capabilities and the use of four zero-day vulnerabilities in a single attack.

Cryptographer Bruce Schneier described the attack as "absolutely crazy in sophistication" and "nation-state stuff""

After watching the YouTube video linked above,

The MMIO abuse implies either the attackers have truly phenomenal research capabilities, and/or that they hacked Apple and obtained internal hardware documentation (more likely).

I was willing to believe that maybe it was just a massive NSA-scale research team up until the part with a custom hash function sbox. Apple appears to have known that the feature in question was dangerous and deliberately both hidden it, whatever it is, and then gone further and protected it with a sort of (fairly weak) digital signing feature.

As the blog post points out, there's no obvious way you could find the right magic knock to operate this feature short of doing a full silicon teardown and reverse engineering (impractical at these nodes). That leaves hacking the developers to steal their internal documentation.

The way it uses a long chain of high effort zero days only to launch an invisible Safari that then starts from scratch, loading a web page that uses a completely different chain of exploits to re-hack the device, also is indicative of a massive organization with truly abysmal levels of internal siloing.

Given that the researchers in question are Russians at Kaspersky, this pretty much has to be the work of the NSA or maybe GCHQ.

Now, thinking logically here, no conspiracy hysteria please. Which government is going to wield the authority required to force Apple to install this undocumented hardware feature? Because it has no other purpose, & according to all literature it's not there. Yet it is there & it's exploited by the most sophisticated hack in history - Apple is an American company, only their own government agencies hold that power.

It's embarrasing for Apple to be denying that they were complicit - if they weren't then somebody else is taking their CPU, remanufacturing it with a new component secretly added then inserting it back... stop it. Apple damn well knows about this - maybe only a very few people at the very top but they did approve of the addition & push it to manufacture. It's ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

If we ignore Apple being an American company & assume any government could order this undocumented feature to be installed, we can obviously discount Russia, China & South Korea as they have all been victims of the attack & subsequently banned the use of iPhones. Russia & China would both have resource to command this type of attack but not the authority to demand Apple implement it. Only the US government could. Maybe Israel, but they would need US approval to force Apple into such a move.

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#3304605 3-Nov-2024 00:48

Again, a claim by Russian services. Thr Wikipedia article does not change that.

Hanlon' Razor applies here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

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#3304669 3-Nov-2024 09:42

In a classic case of unforseen consequences of their own actions, following Kaspersky's release of the reverse-engineered code, the Operation Triangulation exploit has been repurposed commercially to bypass iCloud locks on iPhones from XR to 15 Pro Max.

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#3304765 3-Nov-2024 10:21

And remember Kasperski is controlled by the Russian secret services. And they have been banned from the US.

Accusing a company like Apple of colluding with US secret services is pretty characteristic of Russian disinformation.

It could happen. But Apple generally seems very independent.

In any way, it's unlikely to be something John Doe in South Auckland has access to the type of tools to pull this off.

Completely off topic now.

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