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Apple says no one using Lockdown Mode has been hacked with spyware
- comboy 7mo ago*that we know of
- ectospheno 7mo agoWhich is infinitely better than the cases we know about without the feature enabled.
- criddell 7mo agoWhich is exactly what they said: > “We are not aware of any successful mercenary spyware attacks against a Lockdown Mode-enabled Apple device,” Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke told TechCrunch on Friday.
- 827a 7mo agoTrash headline from TechCrunch; the exact statement from Apple was: > We are not aware of any successful mercenary spyware attacks against a Lockdown Mode-enabled Apple device.
- everdrive 7mo agoGood call-out, and it's also nice to see that Apple tried to speak accurately here.
- sgbeal 7mo ago> nice to see that Apple tried to speak accurately here. The key word being "mercenary", which does not rule out first-party spyware.
- stephbook 7mo agoSo in essence they - can give away your data for free - get hacked by nation-state such as Iran - get hacked by mercenary spyware and not notice and their statement would still be correct. Now that's an awful lot of qualifiers. Plus that's just what they say.
- jmalicki 7mo agoMercenary also excludes people do it for funsies and not getting paid.
- xingped 7mo agoThe wording is weird enough that I have to agree. This is the first time I've ever heard spyware segmented using "mercenary" as a qualifier, which is just insanely suspicious.
- Braxton1980 7mo agoIsn't that assumed? Obviously Apple can't check every iPhone owner to see if they have been hacked now or in the past
- mulmen 7mo agoTechCrunch misrepresented Apple's statement.
- calmbonsai 7mo agoYep. It's business as usual for that rag.
- steve1977 7mo agoNo... they can't... obviously...
- Veserv 7mo agoOh geez. Legal did not give them the go ahead to make the unqualified statement: “We are not aware of any successful spyware attacks” they had to explicitly qualify it with “mercenary”.
- varispeed 7mo agoThere are more weasel words "we are not aware" - means they actually don't know if such attack was successful, "successful" - what is the definition of success? Maybe attackers got access, but didn't find anything interesting? Apple is digging itself into a hole.
- scottyah 7mo agoI think you are, the words make perfect sense. They know of a lot of attack attempts, and so far they have no reason to believe any were successful. Success can mean a lot of different things, why list it all out (were able to extract data, install malicious software, encrypt files with ransomware, delete any data, etc).
- sally_glance 7mo agoHow do you know their definition isn't only "received extortion letters" and "exfiltrate data" is fine as long as it didn't lead to the former?
- Veserv 7mo agoThey have a legal department carefully directing what they say. In a court of law, their lawyers will successfully argue that they are beholden to only the precise letter of their statement. Are you arguing that their lawyers are incompetent and imprecise in their wording? If so, what evidence do you have that their lawyers are incompetent? In light of the correct legal interpretation of their words, being only the specific letters, we can see that your interpretation is incorrect. > They know of a lot of attack attempts No, their statement says nothing about attack attempts. > so far they have no reason to believe any were successful No, their statement says nothing about their belief, only their explicit knowledge. Their statement says nothing about their investigation practices or whether they even attempted to investigate and learn about attacks. Their statement says nothing about non-mercenary attacks. Their statement is technically correct as long as any successful attacks they know about are not explicitly known to be committed by mercenarys.
- tobyhinloopen 7mo agohow many users are using lockdown mode
- tgv 7mo agoI turned it on, out of curiosity, and the impact is minimal, for me.
- snailmailman 7mo agoEvery day users? Probably not many. It forcibly disables lots of nice-to-have features. But users who need a highly secure phone? It’s entirely possible to use the phone without media embeds in iMessage, or shared photo albums, or websites loading in 900 fonts. It’s a trade off likely worth making in some situations.
- ectospheno 7mo agoYou can make a shared photo album with family members. It’s everyone else that is problematic with the feature enabled. In my case I only want to share with my wife and son so it wasn’t a detractor for me.
- captn3m0 7mo agoI was using it till the 26 upgrade on my iOS 13 Mini. Became very sluggish and unusable that I had to disable it. It clearly isn't tested well.
- ectospheno 7mo agoI’ve used it on my personal iPhone since the feature was released. The impact to my life has been minor. I can’t share some thing with my wife in the health app and my son can’t SharePlay with me in the car while I use CarPlay.
- avazhi 7mo agoI’ve been using it for more than a year. Parts of it are pretty inconvenient, like with iMessage and FaceTime not working normally, but aside from that it’s not noticeable for my use case. Despite the inconveniences, unless animated emmojis are important to you I don’t know why you wouldn’t enable it given how strong its protections are.
- stotemoat 7mo ago[dead]
- kakacik 7mo ago"with spyware" - a small addition. What about state actors, what about (semi)private israeli companies selling their solutions happily to all regimes regardless of consequences, what about any other kinds of hacks? As an european, by far the biggest threat to me are US state actors. It would be such a good PR if they could just claim nobody has been hacked, period but I don't see that anywhere.
- fred_is_fred 7mo agoA state actor will just kidnap your kids or throw your wife out a window.
- pdpi 7mo agoA state actor will do those things if they're willing to be overt about their actions. Many aren't, both for the sake of preserving their image, and due to tactical concerns (e.g. you don't want to kill the golden goose).
- chuckadams 7mo agoThe point of spyware is that the target isn't aware of it.
- indistinction 7mo ago[dead]
- pdpi 7mo agoNo amount of hardware/software hardening will save you if you delete "with spyware" and replace it with "with social engineering". If there have been cases of people being hacked through social engineering, it would be dishonest to make a blanket statement "nobody's been hacked", but it doesn't detract from the effectiveness of the technical measures.
- MengerSponge 7mo agohttps://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- mulmen 7mo agoI don't see any bears around here. Bear patrol must be working like a charm.
- MikeNotThePope 7mo agoCompletely off topic. I went solo hiking in Azerbaijan in August of 2022, heading towards some hilltop castle thing I saw on Google Maps. Along the way I met some locals who invited me to join them. We got to the castle around midday and I was preparing to walk back to my car alone, and they all strongly advised against it. They said it was dangerous and invited me to go camping with them, which was pretty fun as they gave me my own tent, food, etc. While at the campground, one guy pulled out his phone to show me pictures of the local wildlife, including a big ol' brown bear. I was too stupid to think about what might eat me out in the woods alone, as I lacked the instinct to check for man-eating predators having grown up in an area where I didn't need to worry about such things. Anyway, now I think about bears before solo hiking.
- wat10000 7mo agoThis is a case where bear attacks have happened, and this specific audience includes some rather delicious salmon. If salmon stop getting eaten by bears after the bear patrol is started, it's more reasonable to make that connection.
- seethishat 7mo agoWe knew 30 years ago that message attachments (mostly email at that time) were a huge security problem. All those binary file types to parse... what could go wrong ;) It's good to see Apple's Lockdown mode having such success by simply disabling message attachments.
- CharlesW 7mo agoI know you're not being serious, but for anyone who may not realize that, it does more than disabling attachments. Lockdown Mode's "optional, extreme" protection substantially changes the experience of using your device. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120 https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120
- et-al 7mo agoOne would hope there would be some sanitization of attachments to prevent this. I also wish there was a regular option in iOS Messages to disable link previews.
- halJordan 7mo agoApple (and Google fwiw) do in fact have impressive hardening around their parsers.
- kenferry 7mo agoThere's a ton of sanitization of attachments. It just isn't foolproof. On iOS messages attachments are decoded in a separate, heavily restricted and sandboxed process, and the decoded sanitized results are sent back to the UI process. It just isn't perfect.
- hmokiguess 7mo agoTo the best of my knowledge I too am unaware of any one using Lockdown Mode-enabled Apple device.
- cebert 7mo agoKash Patel should have had this on. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/iran-linked-hackers-claim-breach-of-fbi-directors-personal-email-doj-official-2026-03-27/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/iran-linked-hackers-claim-b...
- giancarlostoro 7mo agoHis personal gmail was hacked, how does Apple protect your personal gmail from this? We don't even know how they hacked it. Could be password reuse.
- Jerrrrrrrry 7mo ago[flagged]
- cebert 7mo agoI’m definitely not a bot
- Jerrrrrrrry 7mo agoYou sure? Can you demonstrate an iota of agency?
- cebert 7mo agoNice anonymous profile Jerry. Have a nice day rage baiting. I have better things to do.
- kylehotchkiss 7mo agoinsert titanic gif here
- CGMthrowaway 7mo agoRelated somewhat: > On March 23, 2026, the Hong Kong government changed the implementing rules relating to the National Security Law. It is now a criminal offense to refuse to give the Hong Kong police the passwords or decryption assistance to access all personal electronic devices including cellphones and laptops. This legal change applies to everyone, including U.S. citizens, in Hong Kong, arriving or just transiting Hong Kong International Airport. In addition, the Hong Kong government also has more authority to take and keep any personal devices, as evidence, that they claim are linked to national security offenses. https://hk.usconsulate.gov/security-alert-2026032601/ https://hk.usconsulate.gov/security-alert-2026032601/
- mschuster91 7mo agoYeah, another country to add to the "never visit until a sane government appears" list... -.-
- varispeed 7mo agoAnd how do they know if they for decade apparently didn't know iOS was compromised? Apple needs to get their shit together and stop gaslighting people.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoThat's amazing? All ten of them?
- ya3r 7mo agoAre we aware of any attacks (or claims of attacks) against any previous version of the iPhone's Lockdown mode?
- il-b 7mo agoWould Lockdown Mode improve security in cases where the phone is physically connected to a malicious device, such as one from Cellebrite?
- kikimora 7mo agoI think this is the point of Lockdown Mode.
- daft_pink 7mo agoI wish I could use Lockdown Mode on my phone, but not on my iPad. I find Lockdown Mode challenging, because you basically have to use it on every device you own in the Apple ecosystem to have it enabled.
- namegulf 7mo agoIt's also confusing. Are we supposed to enable Lockdown mode always or only we enable manually when we think we're under attack? According to instructions in settings, it is supposed to be enabled when under attack, isn't it too late already? What are we missing...
- Analemma_ 7mo agoYou’re supposed to enable it if you’re important enough to potentially be the target of an attack. Political dissidents, journalists, government officials, HNWIs with a bunch of cryptocurrency and so on should probably have it on always. You’re welcome to turn it on even if you’re not in one of these groups, just accept that it increases the friction of using your phone in a bunch of little ways.
- namegulf 7mo agoThey should probably add these use case and copy in there so that the vulnerable enable it.
- TheDong 7mo agoI continue to find Lockdown mode frustratingly insulting. Just give me the individual options (too) darnit. Like "No facetime and message attachments from strangers, no link previews, no device connections", yes, please, I don't want dickpics from strangers. "No javascript JIT or shared photo albums" no, I actually do want to be able to see friend's albums, and also want my battery to last longer due to optimizing JS. How hard is it to keep the Lockdown Mode toggle, but also add "no link previews, no facetime calls from strangers, never join insecure wifi networks automatically" as separate option toggles I can turn on if I just want those?
- sdwr 7mo agoLockdown mode could be life or death for some users. Adding toggles and partial states increases complexity and risk.
- exabrial 7mo agoPerhaps it's time to acknowledge you probably don't know what another persons situation is. Instead of trying to tell them what to do, allow them to choose.
- halJordan 7mo agoNo, lockdown mode isn't a feature for you to do random things. It's a feature to keep gays in Saudi Arabia alive. Non-Han Chinese alive in China. Journalists in Mexico alive. If they have the option to turn off the life saving measure they will. Thats the way it goes. Bc we don't know which one is the life saving measures, and they depend on each other anyway You guys are incredibly selfish and self centered to be acting this way
- TheDong 7mo agoThe average Non-Han Chinese person doesn't know lockdown mode exists. If you want to frame it as a life-saving feature, it should be on by default and impossible to turn off, or at the very least should be a required prompt during initial phone setup. I'm asking for something that will make more people more secure, since I personally know plenty of people who want iMessage security, but for the web to still be functional (i.e. JIT to work). > If they have the option to turn off the life saving measure they will Then they'll just turn off all of lockdown mode, like they do now, to see a good friend's photo album. Great. ... I feel like we're talking past each other, and frankly with your tone of voice you're clearly not going to listen to anything anyone says on this, so there's not really any point in having this discussion at all.