Enlarge / iPhone Spyware known as Pegasus intercepts confidential data. (credit: Lookout ) Apple has patched three high-severity iOS vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited to infect iPhones so attackers can steal confidential messages from a large number of apps, including Gmail, Facebook, and WhatsApp, security researchers said Thursday. The spyware has been dubbed Pegasus by researchers from mobile security provider Lookout; they believe it has been circulating in the wild for a significant amount of time. Working with researchers from University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab, they have determined that the spyware targeted a political dissident located in the United Arab Emirates and was launched by an US-owned company specializing in computer-based exploits. Based on the price of the attack kit—about $8 million for 300 licenses—the researchers believe it’s being actively used against other iPhone users throughout the world. “Pegasus is the most sophisticated attack we’ve seen on any endpoint because it takes advantage of how integrated mobile devices are in our lives and the combination of features only available on mobile—always connected (WiFi, 3G/4G), voice communications, camera, email, messaging, GPS, passwords, and contact lists,” Lookout and Citizen Lab researchers wrote in a blog post . “It is modular to allow for customization and uses strong encryption to evade detection.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Actively exploited iOS flaws that hijack iPhones likely spread for years
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSN: Scientists at MIT claim to have created a new wireless technology that can triple Wi-Fi data speeds while also doubling the range of the signal. Dubbed MegaMIMO 2.0, the system will shortly enter commercialization and could ease the strain on our increasingly crowded wireless networks. Multiple-input-multiple-output technology, or MIMO, helps networked devices perform better by combining multiple transmitters and receivers that work simultaneously, allowing then to send and receive more than one data signal at the same time. MIT’s MegaMIMO 2.0 works by allowing several routers to work in harmony, transmitting data over the same piece of spectrum. MIT claimed that during tests, MegaMIMO 2.0 was able to increase data transfer speed of four laptops connected to the same Wi-Fi network by 330 percent. Paper co-author Rahul said the technology could also be applied to mobile phone networks to solve similar congestion issues. “In today’s wireless world, you can’t solve spectrum crunch by throwing more transmitters at the problem, because they will all still be interfering with one another, ” Ezzeldin Hamed, lead author on a paper on the topic, told MIT News. “The answer is to have all those access points work with each other simultaneously to efficiently use the available spectrum.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.