Apple fixes serious security flaw

Apple confirmed Friday it had issued a software patch to fix a security issue, which had become known after a prominent United Arab Emirates dissident, Ahmed Mansoor, warned he might have been targeted by hackers.

Mansoor had received a text message that invited him to click on a web link. But instead of clicking, he forwarded the message to researchers at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab.

Investigations revealed the link would have installed a program that would have taken advantage of three flaws that Apple and others had not been aware of.

Who's behind it?

"Once infected, Mansoor's phone would have become a digital spy in his pocket," Citizen Lab said in a statement. "It would have been capable of employing his iPhone camera and microphone to snoop on activity in the vicinity of the device, recording his WhatsApp and Viber calls, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps, and tracking his movements."

Citizen Lab did not directly accuse UAE officials of being behind the attempted hack, but it said similar attacks on critics of the regime had been connected to the government.

Researchers attributed the attack software to a private seller of monitoring systems, Israel's NSO Group.

"I can't think of a more compelling case of serial misuse of lawful intercept malware than the targeting of Mansoor," Citizen Lab's John Scott-Railton said.

hg/cjc (Reuters, dpa)