Cyber Risks · Google Project Zero

Over The Air - Vol. 2, Pt. 3: Exploiting The Wi-Fi Stack on Apple Devices

Summary: Google Project Zero's Gal Beniamini completed a chain that achieved remote kernel code execution on the iPhone 7 over Wi-Fi alone, building on a prior Wi-Fi firmware exploit to take control of the XNU kernel. The post identifies seven vulnerabilities in how the host interacts with the Wi-Fi chip, all reported to Apple and fixed in iOS 11.

Bottom line: Apple connected the Wi-Fi chip over PCIe starting with the iPhone 6, giving the peripheral DMA access to host memory that only an IOMMU (Apple's DART) can contain - and Project Zero had already found no such isolation on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 and Samsung's Exynos 8890, where a compromised Wi-Fi chip meant full device compromise.

Read the original at Google Project Zero ↗

Topics
Vulnerabilities & Patching
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