New iMessage exploit allows hackers to hijack your iPhone by simply sending you a message
Following the recently uncovered vulnerabilities in WhatsApp, Silvanovich and her colleague Samuel Groß started investigating for similar exploits in SMS, MMS, and voicemail, but found none. Then, they shifted their attention to iMessage and started reverse engineering the app, which lead to some worrisome discoveries.
Silvanovich says that iOS has many security checks in place, but the bug she and Groß discovered takes advantage of the underlying logic of the operating system, which makes it possible to bypass the security net. A potential attacker could send a targeted iMessage with specific content in it that Apple's servers would interpret in a certain way and send the target a message that would then automatically trigger the exploit, granting the attacker access to the phone.
Interaction-less bugs are highly sought after in the hacking community, as they don't require the target to do anything. The iMessage vulnerabilities discovered by the Google Project Zero members could fetch prices in the vicinity of "millions or even tens of millions" on the exploit market.
