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| China used the iPhone to spy on Uyghurs |
The Chinese government used the award-winning iPhone exploit to monitor Uyghur Muslims and give Beijing full control of their phones.
The story began in 2017 when the CEO of a major Chinese technology company accused China of being an unfaithful participant in the global hacking competition.
The billionaire founder and CEO of the Chinese cybersecurity giant Qihoo 360 (one of the largest technology companies in China) has publicly criticized Chinese citizens who traveled abroad to participate in the hacking contests.
He said: Getting good results from such accidents is nothing but an illusory success. He warned that Chinese hackers who had vulnerabilities in foreign competitions could no longer be used.
He said hackers should stay in China instead so they can see the true meaning and strategic value of the software's vulnerabilities.
A few months after the state banned cybersecurity research teams from participating in the Pwn2Own hacking competition, or the Global Piracy Competition, the Tianfu Cup debuted in November 2018.
The highest price is $ 200,000. Zhao Qixun, a Chinese security researcher from Qihoo 360, provided a way to exploit this vulnerability to easily and reliably control the latest iPhone devices.
This sophisticated vulnerability allows an attacker to hack an iPhone X iOS 12.1 device and gain control over it remotely by visiting a webpage containing malicious code.
Researchers called it the "mess" vulnerability and showed a proof-of-concept video showing the successful exploitation of the vulnerability to allow a remote attacker to compromise an iPhoneX and grant the intruder access to the victim's data.
Chinese intelligence agencies used the vulnerability as a weapon before Apple addressed the problem, according to a report by MIT Technology Review.
The magazine said: The United States has collected details of how the iPhone clutter vulnerability was used to infiltrate Uyghur Muslims in China.
The August 2019 report indicated that the malicious websites that have been used to hack the iPhone during the past two years were targeting Uyghurs.
Google's security researchers discovered these malicious sites without knowing who they started with, then discover how similar messing around with these malicious sites is.
The magazine said: The United States reached the same conclusion, informing Apple that followed the attack, and reached its own conclusion, confirming that the use of chaos and the attack on the Uyghurs came from one source.
After prioritizing this patch, Apple released an update to fix the bug in January 2019. The patch was released two months after chaos was announced during the Tianfu Cup breakthrough competition in China.
Zhao Qixun flatly refused to participate in monitoring Uyghurs via iPhone, indicating that the Uyghur vulnerability could be used after the patch is released. However, Apple recorded how to use the vulnerability before it was patched in January 2019.
According to reports, Chinese law requires citizens and organizations to cooperate with intelligence agencies when necessary.