Scanning your iPhone for Pegasus
arkadiyt.com
arkadiyt.com
You've never plugged your phone into your computer before? If so, I doubt it could cause more harm to do it again unless you haven't done it since your device was infected. You're just mentally aware of it now, but how long has it been there and how many devices have you plugged your phone into since then, even just to charge? If you never plug your phone into another device, it's moot, but I suspect most people do at sometime or another. "Hey, can I plug my phone in real quick to charge a bit" type stuff. Airdrop is good for quick, small files, but I'm not going to be transferring multiple gigabytes of 4k video via wifi speeds that way.
I would do this, but only on Qubes OS. See here: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/device-handling-security/#usb-s....
If it's real: Adjust your behavior to account for the fact that once you know you're a target, there is no device on the market and no practical measures you can use to maintain safety. Assume everything you do on or near a computer used by you or a close contact is being monitored. The level of effort needed to maintain strong security in the context of being a target is astronomically higher than any individual can deal with.
This is basically what I wish I had, except back in reality there's no Chrome device that's the size of my cell phone. There are some with cellular modems.
You instantly lost.
Just never install an Android app on it (that feature doesn't have the same guarantees as the rest of the system), and preferably use a guest account on it (that's how they run it in security competitions)
You basically have to break four layers to exploit that. You have to break the web renderer, then out of the browser sandbox, then you need to exploit the kernel to be able to write outside the (non persistent) guest account storage, then you need to exploit the firmware/secure boot chain so secure boot doesn't detect your modifications to the filesystem when the system next boots.
You are just foolish not to consider chrome os.
Pinephone and Librem 5 smartphones can run a desktop OS for general computing. So smartphones should still be possible.
For iOS, I don't believe a capable on-device firewall exists; but even if it did, NSO likely may have compromised it too.
Also: If it amounts to unlawful tapping where you live [0], you may want to consider a legal recourse (like signing up for a class-action?).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping#Legal_status
If you configure your own private DNS server over DNS-over-HTTPS, and have your own logging on it, you can review your DNS logs across any devices configured to use it, rapidly.
While keeping a log of your own DNS queries might be a risk for some threat models, if you aren't doing this, chances are you were sending your DNS traffic in the clear to your ISP or mobile operator (or into a VPN provider of questionable trust). You probably aren't a huge amount more exposed by logging it for yourself.
This let me check for any of the IOC domains given in the write-up. While no doubt there will be attacks which could override the provisioning profile that forces this DNS to be used, it would still need to get into the system without making a query that's part of the IOCs. That limits attack vectors a fair bit - the payloads here seemed to do a fair bit of network-based fetching of subsequent payloads. The hostnames of these requests should be logged on your DNS and enable you to rapidly confirm if exposed.
As a bonus you can do host level ad blocking via this DNS server, which should definitely be the minimum you do if you're concerned about skilled attacker threat models - code execution in the browser via a delivered ad isn't something you want to make easy!
Pegasus can always DoH its DNS queries to a server of its choosing bypassing any and all network-wide / os-wide DNS settings. Granted IoCs can be set to flag such behaviour. Besides, DNS and ICMP can be additionally be used to siphon off data too.
When used carefully, IP firewalls make for a good defence.
> ...if you're concerned about skilled attacker threat models - code execution in the browser via a delivered ad isn't something you want to make easy!
True. If NSO group is in your threat-model, it definitely warrants extreme paranoia and caution.
That's a fairly common compromise model though in my view - a message might contain a URL, and your phone might locally do a fetch of it to prepare a pretty preview, and that might try to exploit some weakness in the browser engine or whatever.
Given this was delivered via iMessage you're right - once they have code execution, the attacker can evade your DNS. If they can't get enough code in through their initial method to get their own DNS going, they might send a dropper which then pulls more code in from elsewhere, and that may give you an IOC to detect from that first query. If they can front their content on a popular domain though, this won't help.
Definitely favour network level protections before doing this, but if you just want the ability to get a view of your own DNS traffic from your device when it moves across WiFi and mobile data, this will give you a starting point.
From <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...>
"At around the same time the file com.apple.CrashReporter.plist file was written in /private/var/root/Library/Preferences/, likely to disable reporting of crash logs back to Apple."
I've got crash logs and as much analytics and telemetry disabled in a custom provisioning profile just to save having to navigate through menus to turn everything off...
Would need to test this on one of those devices to see if there's a false positive as a result though. But it's possible this is a false alarm if it's just checking for existence of this file. Has anyone checked through the logic the tester uses?
It's actually a pretty big security win that I don't have to worry about what my grandma downloaded from the internet for her iPhone for instance, the way I have to worry about her laptop. Apple profits from this, and I really don't mind.
Yet you're ironically responding about an article telling how to find if your iPhone has been infected with Pegasus, one of the worst most obtrusive security vulnerabilities you can have, period.
I think you're missing the big picture for most normal people.
Of course this is a big deal. But I think people are sort of missing the point. Nation States will always find a way in. There’s really no kind of security that stops a persistent well resourced threat.
If you think android/<insert OS> is immune to an advanced persistent threat, you're wrong.
Apple will fix these vulnerabilities, and then these professional hackers will get back to work on finding a new way in. The goal isn't 100% impenetrable security--that's impossible. The goal is really imposing a high enough cost so that as few as possible are capable of getting in.
There is not a rampant security problem on iOS. But there are still vulnerabilities for those with the resources to find them. That's only surprising to people that don't follow the security world.
> If you think android/<insert OS> is immune to an advanced persistent threat, you're wrong.
Some of these devices are probably even more vulnerable. But the heterogeneity of systems is what provides practical security and systems like iOS are the opposite of that. Through this uniform software environment you create the juicy target in the first place.
Also anything in the Apple cloud is highly vulnerable to state actors anyway. Not only in the Apple cloud of course.
This may be the first time someone tried to argue the fragmented nature of Android makes it more secure.
It is true that iOS, being as uniform as it is, can present a plum target. The difference is that this also means that with one fell swoop Apple can mitigate vulnerabilities for a billion devices--and they do.
One of the primary reasons to buy an iPhone is Apple's commitment to update support for many, many years. All phones will have vulnerabilities. That is inevitable. The most important part is manufacturer commitment to promptly fixing them when they're found.
> States probably have dragnet surveillance and devices like iPhones make this far easier than it should be.
The cost of these exploits makes it unlikely that it's truly dragnet. You don't want to risk burning your expensive exploit by going after literally everything. The wider you cast the net, the more likely you are to be found, your exploit patched, your infrastructure compromised. Again, platform security is not about being impenetrable--it's about imposing costs high enough to limit the number of players and the corresponding damage.
This isn't about favorites, I own Apple devices myself, although only MacOS and I don't expose by ID to Apple. Doing so is a major risk for the case your OS gets compromised.
As with Windows PCs in the past, you become a target with popularity.
With dragnet surveillance I mean that state actors scoop up every source they can get their hand on. It doesn't need justification because they already moved the goalpost to wanting to access encrypted information. Als the other sources aren't even questioned anymore.
And the Guardian has some in-depth reporting going on. https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/pegasus-project
None of this really answer how prevalent the spyware is, though.
If only there was a central choke-point, globally, for all iMessage messages that could weed out particularly ill-formed messages such that they never reach your phone ...
If only ...
Wouldn't a simple block/allow list for sending IDs / phone numbers be trivial to implement on the iCloud (or whatever) side of things such that the end user could allow their known contacts and block (everyone else) ?
Forgive me - I am not an iMessage user ...
However they are working on better sandboxing to help prevent this class of attacks, and Google Project Zero posted an overview of how that "blastdoor" process works:
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-look-at-ime...
They can use fake cell towers, no need to escalate that far.
I also installed usbmuxd via Pacman.