Unpatched flaw 'weaponises' Apple AirTags to turn them into the phisherman's friend
- Reference: 1632943446
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/29/weaponised_apple_airtags/
- Source link:
[1]Launched back in April , AirTags are compact battery-powered devices you stick to your belongings in order to locate them when misplaced. Apple chief compliance officer Kyle Andeer [2]was very clear that AirTags are in no way a copy of Tile's popular compact battery-powered devices you stick to your belongings in order to locate them when misplaced.
Should your AirTag-equipped thing not be where you thought it was, you can enable Lost Mode. When in Lost Mode, an AirTag scanned via NFC provides a unique URL which lets the finder get in contact with the loser – and it's this page where security researcher Bobby Rauch discovered a concerning vulnerability.
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"An attacker can carry out Stored XSS on this https://found.apple.com page by injecting a malicious payload into the AirTag 'Lost Mode' phone number field," Rauch wrote in an [4]analysis of the issue . "A victim will believe they are being asked to sign into iCloud so they can get in contact with the owner of the AirTag, when in fact, the attacker has redirected them to a credential hijacking page.
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"Other XSS exploits can be carried out as well like session token hijacking, clickjacking, and more. An attacker can create weaponised AirTags and leave them around, victimising innocent people who are simply trying to help a person find their lost AirTag."
Apple has not commented publicly on the vulnerability nor does it seem to be taking the issue particularly seriously. Speaking to [7]Brian Krebs , Rauch claimed that Apple sat on the flaw for three months – and that while it confirmed it planned to resolve the vulnerability in a future update, the company has not yet done so. Apple also refused to confirm whether Rauch's discovery would qualify for its bug bounty programme and a potential cash payout – a final insult which led to his public release of the flaw.
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It's not the first time Apple has stood accused of failing to respond to security researchers. Earlier this month a pseudonymous researcher known as "IllusionOfChaos" [9]dropped three zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Apple's iOS 15 – six months after originally reporting them to the company. A fourth flaw had been fixed in an earlier iOS release, the researcher noted, "but Apple decided to cover it up and not list it on the security content page."
The company has also been experiencing a few problems with the patches it does release. An update released to fix a vulnerability in the company's Finder file manager, capable of bypassing the Quarantine and Gatekeeper security functions built into macOS, only worked [10]for lowercase URLs – although [11]emergency patches released two weeks ago appear to have had better luck.
[12]We seem to have materialized in a universe in which Barney the Purple Dinosaur is designing iPhones for Apple
[13]Spotlight on Apple, Google app stores: What happened to Tile, Spotify, Match – and that proposed law in Arizona
[14]Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait
[15]Apple emergency patches fix zero-click iMessage bug used to inject NSO spyware
The AirTag vulnerability did not appear to have been fixed at the time of writing, and while exploitation is perhaps unlikely – given that each "weaponised AirTag" would cost the attacker $29 each or four for $99, making it rather expensive to be indiscriminately seeding around the place – it could knock users' confidence in scanning lost tags, harming the efficacy of the entire system.
"This highlights the ease at which a malicious actor could simply manipulate a victim into unwittingly divulging details on a phishing link," ESET UK security specialist Jake Moore told The Register . "Threat actors are very good at pouncing on emotions such as fear or worry, so in the case of a lost phone or device many people would be likely to proceed with the link without further due diligence in their good deed.
"If Apple were to have had prior warning of this attack vector they may have believed it to be a weak attack with limited chance to exploit. However, as shown in theory, where there is a vulnerability in the field it will remain exploitable and likely to occur."
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Apple, as is usual for the company, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication, and it is not yet clear when the flaw will be patched. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/20/apple_product_launch/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/25/antitrust_app_store_analysis/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YVTiJCaTL50Wq@dkxZphlAAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://medium.com/@bobbyrsec/zero-day-hijacking-icloud-credentials-with-apple-airtags-stored-xss-6997da43a216
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YVTiJCaTL50Wq@dkxZphlAAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YVTiJCaTL50Wq@dkxZphlAAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/09/apple-airtag-bug-enables-good-samaritan-attack/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YVTiJCaTL50Wq@dkxZphlAAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/24/apple_zeroday/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/22/macos_rce_flaw/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/13/apple_ios_macos_security_fixes/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/20/apple_product_launch/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/25/antitrust_app_store_analysis/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/24/apple_zeroday/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/13/apple_ios_macos_security_fixes/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YVTiJCaTL50Wq@dkxZphlAAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "a fanboi confidently if baselessly told me"
Maybe we should carry around stickers that say "citation required" when confronted by such fanbois. The stickers need to be big enough to fit over their mouths and be quite difficult to remove.
Re: "We did not copy Tile"
They also didn't copy tile in that when anyone reports an Airtag lost, all iPhones are sensitized to that fact and will report the lost tag to the iNetwork if they come within range of it. As far as I know, iPhone users can't opt their phones out of being part of the network.
Re: "We did not copy Tile"
There's no privacy implication - if you walk by my lost Air Tag with your iPhone all I get is a report of its location, which comes to me from Apple not directly from your phone. So it doesn't leak any personal information or allow me to determine your location (only that 'someone with an iPhone was near this spot at some point') so why would you want to opt out of being part of that? Just on the "I don't care about anyone but myself" principle?
Re: "We did not copy Tile"
"why would you want to opt out of being part of that?"
For the same reason I want to opt out of scanning my photos for child porn, for the same reason I want to opt out of sharing my wifi with nearby strangers, for the same reason I want to opt out of all this Apple shit. It's not the privacy implications, it's that it *should be* my phone, my cpu, my data plan, my battery, and all such uses should be *opt in*. If in your mind that translates to "I don't care about anyone but myself", then you can just fuck off as well. Put me down as selfish *and* antisocial.
As an aside, I've been looking into 4G feature phones, it seems all the models available in the USA are just a dumbed-down Android smartphone, except the "independent" kaios which has the Google spyware added as well.
Re: "We did not copy Tile"
"As far as I know, iPhone users can't opt their phones out of being part of the network."
If they fix this flaw, I don't think there are many problems being part of the network. If you still want to opt out, Settings -> Apple ID (at the top) -> Find My -> Find My iPhone -> Find My Network -> switch to off. At least that's the path on IOS 14. I don't know if it has changed with IOS 15. It means you can't use the network yourself and you won't be part of it for others.
Save $29.99
And stick a label with your phone number onto the item you're wanting someone else to recover for you.
Re: Save $29.99
Which does not work.
I have tags on my keys with both my phone number and email address and never gotten a notification the 5 or 6 times I've left them somewhere over the past couple years.
Re: Save $29.99
You don't understand how they work at all if you think that's even remotely equivalent.
Stop educating the sheeple
Shush, I'm using that flock as a distributed GPS tracking network for my mobile assets. Total outlay was a 4 pack of tags and a secondhand Air 4. No ongoing costs except a few CR2032 batteries every year or so.
Way more people have iThings with location and BT turned on by default, than have the Tile app installed and active.
"We did not copy Tile"
This is true. Tile is cross-platform, while AirTags only work on iProducts. Of course, the iSheep have eaten it up, to the point that a fanboi confidently if baselessly told me that AirTags were more popular than Tiles. For my part, not being an Apple user, I had never even heard of AirTags.