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These attacks appear frequently, are fixed and then refined. These have interesting names – Roaming Mantis, for example, offered payloads that worked differently on different platforms – phishing for iOS and DNS-hijacking on Android. They seek out vulnerabilities on a component level, and they engage in highly sophisticated phishing attacks that encourage people to click links that download malware to their machines.
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The important thing about ZombieLoad is that it shows how as platforms become more secure, attackers are exploring far more sophisticated ways to exploit devices. Traditional computer security models have relied on perimeter protection – things like firewalls, virus checkers, and malware detection.īut those defenses aren’t robust enough to tackle or spot a threat like ZombieLoad.
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This flaw lets hackers use design weaknesses in Intel chips (back to 2011) to steal data from machines, including Macs.Īpple very quickly shipped security patches to protect against this vulnerability and published a detailed support document that Mac users who handle particularly sensitive data should read. The nature of cyber attacks is changing. One good illustration of how the nature of these threats are changing comes in the form of the recently-revealed Intel processor vulnerability, ZombieLoad.
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