Apple's HomeKit Vulnerability Exploited by Spy Agencies; Specific Details Yet to Be Disclosed

The notorious Israeli commercial spyware developer, NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, was recently discovered to be used in attacks against two Serbian iPhone users. It is almost certain that the newly exploited vulnerability by NSO involves Apple's smart home service suite, HomeKit.

It is noteworthy that this attack was proactively detected by Apple, which means Apple actively notified these two Serbian users upon detecting potential threats. Subsequently, these users contacted professional organizations to analyze their iPhones.

Pegasus spyware by NSO Group can infect the target user's iPhone by just sending an iMessage, without requiring any interaction from the user or sending any notifications.

However, the vulnerability related to iMessage has been fixed. This time, NSO seems to have exploited a new vulnerability, using a HomeKit flaw to complete the attack.

After analysis by the professional organization, it was confirmed that both infected iPhones were receiving data from two different iCloud email addresses, both controlled by NSO.

This is not the first instance of hackers utilizing HomeKit vulnerabilities for attacks. Similar attacks had also occurred in India before. It is confirmed that Apple is aware of the vulnerability and has likely deployed defensive measures, but the specific details of the flaw have not yet been disclosed.

It remains unclear who is behind the attacks on these two Serbian users. The shadowy figure used NSO's Pegasus spyware for the attack, which is why Pegasus is known as commercial spyware.