Once activated, this mode will make certain features ineffective, such as receiving attachments by SMS. A choice that says, in hollow, Apple’s helplessness in the face of spy software merchants.
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Reinforced security parameters, activated by a click to protect yourself from the worst spy software: this is the novelty that Apple announced for its devices, Wednesday July 6.
The manufacturer of smartphones, tablets and computers, whose software security flaws have been exploited in the past by the Elite PEGASUS spy software, decided to make available, from fall, A “lockdown fashion” (“isolation mode” in French) supposed to thwart infections by the most sophisticated spy software.
This will have a direct cost in terms of functionalities, since some will become inactive. It will become impossible to receive, with SMS, attached pieces like images, while the preview of the links by text will also be deactivated. The user will also not be able to receive a video call by Apple Facetime technology from a new correspondent: there will be a preliminary exchange (message or call). Some advanced web navigation features will also be deactivated.
This is explained by the fact that the calls, the reception of attachments or the web navigation, for example, particularly lend the flank to computer flaws, and therefore to entry doors for malware. The PEGASUS spy software, manufactured by NSO Group, thus drawn part of flaws in the Apple SMS system to infect iPhones, until recently.
If this feature allowing “an extreme security level” will be activated by all users, Apple considers that it concerns above all “the very rare users who, because of what they are or what they Do, can be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats, such as those of NSO Group and other private companies developing spy software on behalf of States “.
apple forced to degrade His service
To ensure the robustness of its “Lockdown Mode”, Apple also announced double the bonuses granted to computer pirates who would find flaws and which would communicate them to it. Apple promises these “ethical hackers” up to two million dollars of reward.
hollow, this new mode also says a little of Apple’s helplessness in the face of these spy software merchants and their hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development. The company is in fact constrained, to offer an optimal level of security, to degrade its service to protect its most exposed users.
This reinforced protection mode is an additional notch in the showdown that the company has engaged with NSO Group. Since the fall of 2021, the company has started to warn its users when it has reason to think that they have been targeted by sophisticated spy software, in particular Pegasus. Apple took advantage of the press conference presenting the “Lockdown Mode” to indicate that notifications had been sent to its users in more than 150 countries, without nevertheless specifying the total number of alerts. Reason advanced by the company: the trial which currently opposes it to NSO Group. Apple has indeed assigned the Israeli company before the American justice, notably seeking to prohibit it from using all apparatus and services of the apple brand.
Apple has already promised to pay the damages that it could harvest to organizations working on detection and the fight against malware. The company intends to anticipate this potential payment by a first check for $ 10 million granted to the Dignity and Justice Fund of the Ford Foundation, an American philanthropic organization, which should announce its first funding in the field of the fight against spy software later early 2023.