iOS 18.6 and macOS Sequoia 15.6 Address Chrome Zero-Day Attack

[Big_D]

So many questions, from the article feels like Google is bad guy but why in the world any app on non jailbroken device installed from Apple App Store can execute arbitrary code?

Remember they said it’s not secure to install app from any other source? It’s fully Apple controlled environment, it’s even Apple WebKit engine

W T F ? What’s point of all this security measures?!

It can happen, because the code is written by humans (and, no, AI won't make the code flawless, currently it is learning from bad examples of coding, as well as good examples and all code has mistakes, so it won't be any better at coding than the source material, and possibly only as good as the worst code it has learnt from), both the ANGLE library, in this case, and iOS itself.

The security measures make it as safe as possible, but there is always a residual risk. It is like mountain climbing, free climbing is dangerous, so you use ropes and belay systems, so it is a bit safer, but there are falling rocks, so you wear safety equipment, so it is a bit safer... But as the tragedy in Karakorum this week showed, even an experienced climber with safety gear isn't invulnerable.

We make things as secure and safe as we can, that is the best we can do, but we have to find and fix every bug in the software, the bad guys only need to find a single usable bug in order to crash or infect a device.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Sounds like if a Google Chrome (or Safari) user went to view any web page with the malicious code embedded, it could take over their whole system by "allowing remote users to execute arbitrary code" on their machine. Appears to affect anyone using the web browser to view an infected web site, and not only to affect downloads of files or third party apps.

You know... Both my mom and I use Chrome, and I think this has hit us both at different times in the past six months. I got a call from her earlier this year in an absolute panic because she went to a Web page that suddenly took over her entire screen with what appeared to be a standard "Send-me-Bitcoin-to-free-your-computer" attack. I somehow managed to remotely walk her through power cycling (praise me, please, she's 88 years old), purging everything from her browser, and restarting Chrome. Didn't think much of it until about a month ago when the same thing happened to me. Landed on an older bookmarked WordPress page that belonged to an artist friend of mine, and my entire browser exploded with the same experience my mom had. When I did a bit of forensics, it looked like my friend's WordPress site had been hacked, and malicious code injected into it that ran when someone landed on it. Glad to see this fixed, and the ease of which it worked on both my mom and my laptops leads me to believe there's a damned good reason they're not releasing the technical details at this time.

 

[needsomecoffee]

If one uses browser preferences to turn off hardware graphics acceleration would one be immune to this ?? Example from Brave: "Use graphics acceleration when available" = OFF. Thx in Advance, NSC

 

[fguerraz]

Sandboxing on MacOS just plain sucks compared to Linux with Flatpak.

There is no way to prevent Chrome, or any browser, from accessing your Documents folder, or anything that the user didn't explicitly decide to open using the system file selector dialog (which Flatpak calls portals). So if the browser is compromised, the hacker has access to all your files.
On Linux you get SECCOMP, and user namespaces, as additional layers of sandboxing.

The situation is so tragic that Google even removed the chrome://sandbox URL on Mac.

 

[TheTuna]

The be clear, Both Chrome and macOS need to be updated to resolve the issue?

 

[fguerraz]

The be clear, Both Chrome and macOS need to be updated to resolve the issue?

The way the article is worded, it seems like the vulnerability was in a system library that Chrome uses, so it seems the 18.6 system update is enough to patch the problem

 

[Dr Nobody Important]

This is useful for the few people that use Chrome, probably all of Google's employees.

 

[fguerraz]

This is useful for the few people that use Chrome, probably all of Google's employees.

The lack of adequate sandboxing applies to all applications, including Safari, because the OS doesn’t provide the required mechanisms.

 

[poi ran]

If this is as serious as it sounds, I would like to know if previous versions of Safari and macOS will always be patched.

Also, would be interesting to know if other browser engines are also affected. I'm using Firefox on my Macs.

Yeah, will Ventura need a patch? What about Safari on Ventura? (I even have computers with Mojave and Monterey, my daughter might be on Ventura)
I rarely use Safari anyway, as Chrome, Firefox and Opera are updated more often, but sometimes other programs open Safari.