Published in Mobiles

Spooks were hacking Apple gear for decades

by on24 March 2017


All the while people were saying it was impossible


The Central Intelligence Agency was bugging iPhones and Macs through-out the period that the Apple users claimed they were safe from intrusion.

For those who came in late, a few years ago Apple fanboys always claimed that iPhone and Macs were safe from hackers because the Apple logo magically protected them. It was true that there was few malware written for Macs, although this was thought that no one could be bothered breaking into a Mac to score a Coldplay collection and lots of emails from their owner’s mum warning them to wrap up warmly.

However, some historic files from Wikileaks shows that the CIA had knocked over Macs and iPhones core firmware completely and anything that took place under the Apple logo could be seen by the US’s top spooks.

By targeting the UEFI, hackers were compromising Macs even after the operating system was re-installed. Like most of the current Wikileaks trove, the information is a little out of date, but it does show that the during the period that most Mac users considered themselves safe from hackers they were totally owned and blissfully unaware of it. Apple said it has fixed the problems now, but these days there is rather a lot of malware out there which targets Apple gear, so the CIA is probably using something else,

 

Last modified on 24 March 2017
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