Apple says no one using Lockdown Mode has been hacked with spyware
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
> We are not aware of any successful mercenary spyware attacks against a Lockdown Mode-enabled Apple device.
The key word being "mercenary", which does not rule out first-party spyware.
- can give away your data for free - get hacked by nation-state such as Iran - get hacked by mercenary spyware and not notice
and their statement would still be correct. Now that's an awful lot of qualifiers. Plus that's just what they say.
Apple is digging itself into a hole.
In light of the correct legal interpretation of their words, being only the specific letters, we can see that your interpretation is incorrect.
> They know of a lot of attack attempts
No, their statement says nothing about attack attempts.
> so far they have no reason to believe any were successful
No, their statement says nothing about their belief, only their explicit knowledge. Their statement says nothing about their investigation practices or whether they even attempted to investigate and learn about attacks. Their statement says nothing about non-mercenary attacks.
Their statement is technically correct as long as any successful attacks they know about are not explicitly known to be committed by mercenarys.
That's a good point. The best way not to know about any successful attacks is not to know about any of them. I also can definitively state that I'm not aware of any successful attacks, but for obvious reasons this is a basically meaningless statement. Without more data, it's not clear how meaningful the statement they gave is, and while it probably is more meaningful than mine, it doesn't make sense to jump from what they said to "there have definitively been no successful attacks" based on it.
> No, their statement says nothing about attack attempts.
Exactly, they're keeping the statement brief and correct. They have sent multiple batches of notifications to users on previous attacks.
The statement is clear, covers their primary use case for the product, and I'm sure is legally sound. You're grasping at straws trying to think up ways they can be lying to you. I would be very surprised if you ever have used their lockdown mode with any actual cause.
It is advisable to not grasp at straws to think up ways that highly paid lawyers are not saying exactly the words they have approved. That is literally their job and they are good at it.
If they meant something more expansive they can do so. It is not the public’s job to do it for them while letting them retreat to the legally binding interpretation at their pleasure.
They have very good reason to believe that - shareholders and public perception. Apple maintains image of their phone being secure and that is far from the truth. As long as general public don't know their phones have holes like Swiss cheese, the shareholders will be happy.
At risk of stating the obvious, isn't success "hacked it and no one ever found out (at the time)"? By definition, Apple could probably only be aware of unsuccessful attacks. Though that's not guaranteed either, considering all the myriad failure modes that there must be.
> On March 23, 2026, the Hong Kong government changed the implementing rules relating to the National Security Law. It is now a criminal offense to refuse to give the Hong Kong police the passwords or decryption assistance to access all personal electronic devices including cellphones and laptops. This legal change applies to everyone, including U.S. citizens, in Hong Kong, arriving or just transiting Hong Kong International Airport. In addition, the Hong Kong government also has more authority to take and keep any personal devices, as evidence, that they claim are linked to national security offenses.
It's good to see Apple's Lockdown mode having such success by simply disabling message attachments.
I also wish there was a regular option in iOS Messages to disable link previews.
On iOS messages attachments are decoded in a separate, heavily restricted and sandboxed process, and the decoded sanitized results are sent back to the UI process. It just isn't perfect.
Like "No facetime and message attachments from strangers, no link previews, no device connections", yes, please, I don't want dickpics from strangers.
"No javascript JIT or shared photo albums" no, I actually do want to be able to see friend's albums, and also want my battery to last longer due to optimizing JS.
How hard is it to keep the Lockdown Mode toggle, but also add "no link previews, no facetime calls from strangers, never join insecure wifi networks automatically" as separate option toggles I can turn on if I just want those?
If they have the option to turn off the life saving measure they will. Thats the way it goes. Bc we don't know which one is the life saving measures, and they depend on each other anyway
You guys are incredibly selfish and self centered to be acting this way
If you want to frame it as a life-saving feature, it should be on by default and impossible to turn off, or at the very least should be a required prompt during initial phone setup.
I'm asking for something that will make more people more secure, since I personally know plenty of people who want iMessage security, but for the web to still be functional (i.e. JIT to work).
> If they have the option to turn off the life saving measure they will
Then they'll just turn off all of lockdown mode, like they do now, to see a good friend's photo album. Great.
... I feel like we're talking past each other, and frankly with your tone of voice you're clearly not going to listen to anything anyone says on this, so there's not really any point in having this discussion at all.
The number of users who currently know they need to toggle on lockdown, and would be confused by having toggles under it like "Disable JIT, Disable link previews", etc, is approximately 0.
The number of users who would turn on "disable link previews" and be more secure, but won't enable all of lockdown, is at least me, so that's more than 0. By that logic, it follows that splitting it out makes more users more secure, right?
Let me know where I'm wrong there. Do you legitimately think that there's risk of users knowing they need lockdown mode being unable to find it if there's additional settings added? I guess apple can't add any new settings anywhere.
Do you think that more settings means apple is more likely to introduce a bug that impacts security? I guess apple shouldn't be allowed to add any new settings anywhere.
It would be such a good PR if they could just claim nobody has been hacked, period but I don't see that anywhere.
Sorry but you still need to be wary of state actors and the handing over of data to authorities, which is a far simpler approach than breaking security boundaries. The hacking statement is pure marketing.
Yes, it is impossible to be 100% ironclad secure from all possible methods of either digitally surveilling you or exfiltrating your data.
This does not mean that measures like those in the iPhone's Lockdown Mode are not genuinely helpful to a subset of the population that is at high risk for certain types of attacks.
Are we supposed to enable Lockdown mode always or only we enable manually when we think we're under attack?
According to instructions in settings, it is supposed to be enabled when under attack, isn't it too late already?
What are we missing...
You’re welcome to turn it on even if you’re not in one of these groups, just accept that it increases the friction of using your phone in a bunch of little ways.
I find Lockdown Mode challenging, because you basically have to use it on every device you own in the Apple ecosystem to have it enabled.
But users who need a highly secure phone? It’s entirely possible to use the phone without media embeds in iMessage, or shared photo albums, or websites loading in 900 fonts. It’s a trade off likely worth making in some situations.
Parts of it are pretty inconvenient, like with iMessage and FaceTime not working normally, but aside from that it’s not noticeable for my use case.
Despite the inconveniences, unless animated emmojis are important to you I don’t know why you wouldn’t enable it given how strong its protections are.
It’s mostly that I don’t want to be that guy that leaks my company’s secrets.
Anyway, now I think about bears before solo hiking.
> “We are not aware of any successful mercenary spyware attacks against a Lockdown Mode-enabled Apple device,” Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke told TechCrunch on Friday.
Apple needs to get their shit together and stop gaslighting people.