Apple on Wednesday unveiled a new way for activists, journalists and other targets of state-sponsored espionage to protect themselves from spyware.
A lockdown mode being added to iPhones, iPads and Mac computers aims to counter threats from a thriving industry that provides governments with sophisticated spying tools.
“While the vast majority of users will never fall victim to highly targeted cyberattacks, we will work tirelessly to protect the small number of users that do,” said Ivan Krstic, Apple’s head of security engineering, in a blog post.
The tech giant is increasing the bounty it pays researchers for uncovering vulnerabilities in its software when it comes to lockdown mode, raising the maximum reward to $2 million.
Concerns about digital snooping have been fueled by media reports that Israel-made Pegasus spyware, manufactured by the NSO Group, has been used by governments to monitor opponents, activists and journalists.
Apple is suing NSO Group in US federal court, saying the Israeli firm’s spyware was used to target a small number of iPhone users worldwide.
“State-sponsored actors like NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said when the lawsuit was filed late last year.
Pegasus infiltrates mobile phones to extract data or activate a camera or microphone to spy on their owners.
According to NSO Group, the software will only be sold to government agencies to target criminals and terrorists with the green light from Israeli authorities.
A Spanish court said last month a judge wanted to visit Israel to question NSO Group’s top executive over a high-level hacking scandal involving the Spanish prime minister’s phone.
Meanwhile, Google said last month that an Italy-based firm’s hacking tools were used to spy on Apple and Android smartphones in Italy and Kazakhstan, shedding light on a “thriving” spyware industry.
Google’s threat analysis team said RCS Lab-made spyware attacked the phones using a combination of tactics, including unusual “drive-by downloads” done without the victims’ knowledge.
Google said it warned Android users who were being targeted by the spyware and strengthened software defenses.
The Google threat team is tracking more than 30 companies that sell surveillance capabilities to governments, according to the Alphabet-owned tech titan.
“The commercial spyware industry is thriving and growing at a significant rate,” said Google.
Apple’s lockdown mode is designed to block or disable some features and capabilities to prevent spyware from exploiting them.
Extreme, optional mode “strengthens device defenses and severely restricts certain functions, greatly reducing the attack surface that could potentially be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware,” Apple said.
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