The UAE Cyber Security Council issued a stark warning to residents this Thursday, urging them to update their Apple and Android devices immediately to the latest version to safeguard against serious vulnerabilities.
The concerns were raised following the emergency updates pushed out by Apple, addressing a significant security loophole documented as CVE-2023-41064. In tandem, Android released patches for vulnerabilities identified as CVE-2023-41061 and CVE-2023-35674. According to the UAE authority, these flaws could potentially grant unauthorized users access to sensitive information and complete control over the affected devices.
These findings come on the back of an investigation carried out by the digital watchdog group, Citizen Lab, which found evidence of a spyware linked to the cyber intelligence firm NSO exploiting a new flaw specifically in Apple devices. The lab made this discovery while inspecting an Apple device belonging to an employee of a Washington-based civil society group last week.
In a troubling revelation, Citizen Lab noted that the flaw permitted the compromise of iPhones running the most current iOS version, 16.6, without requiring any interaction from the device owner. The group subsequently reached out to Apple, who confirmed the existence of the high-security “Lockdown Mode” feature on Apple devices, which effectively blocks this kind of attack.
