iPhone and Mac users: Hackers could get ‘full admin access to your device’

Apple has issued a warning to iPhone, iPad and Mac users of a serious security breach that could give hackers full, remote access to these devices. In two separate security reports released this week, Apple explains that the vulnerabilities that have been detected means there’s the potential for hackers to get ‘full admin access’ to the device, according to the Associated Press.

Full admin access

What this means is that hackers could exploit this breach to impersonate the device's owner and subsequently run any software in their name, said Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security.

Security experts have advised users to update affected devices — the iPhone6S and later models; several models of the iPad, including the 5th generation and later, all iPad Pro models and the iPad Air 2; and Mac computers running MacOS Monterey. The flaw also affects some iPod models. Apple did not say in the reports how, where or by whom the vulnerabilities were discovered, only indicating citing an anonymous researcher.

Possible culprit?

Although Apple did not disclose much about the possible culprit, industry watchers have some theories. Commercial spyware companies such as Israel's NSO Group are known for identifying and taking advantage of such flaws, exploiting them in malware that surreptitiously infects targets' smartphones, siphons their contents and surveils the targets in real time.

The group has been blacklisted by the U.S. Commerce Department. Its spyware is known to have been used in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America against journalists, dissidents and human rights activists.

Apple has previously acknowledged flaws similar to this recent security breach in what experts estimate to be perhaps a dozen occasions, noting that it was aware of reports that such security holes had been exploited.

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