I think you have to read "widespread malware attack" in Apple lit as a term of art; it's a part of the corporate identity dating back to the inception of the iPhone and (I think maybe) ties into some policy stuff that is very salient to them right now. I think SEAR is extremely aware of what real-world exploitation of iPhones looks like. You were never going to get their unfiltered take in a public blog post like this, though.

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strcat 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I think you have to read "widespread malware attack" in Apple lit as a term of art

There's widespread exploitation of Apple devices around the world by many governments, companies, etc. Apple and Google downplay it. The attacks are often not at all targeted but rather you visit a web page involving a specific political movement such as Catalan independence and get exploited via Safari or Chrome. That's not a highly targeted attack and is a typical example of how those exploits get deployed. The idea that they're solely used against specific individuals targeted by governments is simply not true. Apple and Google know that's the case but lead people to believe otherwise to promote their products as more safe than they are.

> I think SEAR is extremely aware of what real-world exploitation of iPhones looks like.

Doesn't seem that way based on their interactions with Citizen Lab and others.

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tptacek 3 days ago | parent [-]

I understood the point you were making previously and was not pushing back on it. I think you're wrong about SEAR's situational awareness, though. Do you know many people there? I'd be surprised if not. Platform security is kind of an incestuous scene.

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strcat 3 days ago | parent [-]

We have regular contact with many people at Google in that space and nearly no contact with anyone at Apple as a whole. Sometimes people we know go to work at Apple and become nearly radio silent about anything technical.

It's often external parties finding exploits being used in the wild and reporting it to Apple and Google. Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, etc.

We regularly receive info from people working at or previously working at companies developing exploits and especially from people at organization using those exploits. A lot of our perspective on it is based on having documentation on capabilities, technical documents, etc. from this over a long period of time. Sometimes we even get access to outdated exploit code. It's major releases bringing lots of code churn, replaced components and new mitigations which seem to regularly break exploits rather than security patches. A lot of the vulnerabilities keep working for years and then suddenly the component they exploited was rewritten so it doesn't work anymore. There's not as much pressure on them to develop new exploits regularly as people seem to think.

	▲	saagarjha 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Disclaimer: I have never worked with the team on the Apple side. My impression is that Apple's threat intelligence effort is similar in quality to Google's. Of course external parties also help but Apple also independently finds chains sometimes.