I ran this tool and found a trace that I was infected (malware detected in CrashReporter.plist). Any clue what I should be doing, if anything, to address this?
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.
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....
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?
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.