Update your iPhone today to avoid hack via Wi-Fi

Considering an iPhone update? You now have another reason to upgrade to the recently released iOS 11.

                    <p>A google researcher has discovered a security vulnerability (CVE-2017-11120) in iOS 10 and earlier which is also found in other broadcom wi-fi chip devices.</p>
                    <p>Gal Beniamini, a security researcher with Google Project Zero, found similar vulnerabilities in the Broadcom WiFi SoC (Software-on-Chip) and BroadPwn vulnerability disclosed by an Exodus Intelligence researcher Nitay Artenstein, earlier this year. The security defect permits access to smartphones over local Wi-Fi networks. The fault gives hackers the potential to take control over the victim's iPhone remotely, given they have access to the iPhone's MAC address or network-port ID. The relative ease of obtaining the MAC address of a connected device, results in iPhone users becoming increasingly under threat of the cyber-attack.</p>
                    <p>However, Apple have overcome the flaw with the release of the newest iOS 11 which became available on September 19.</p>
                    <p>Benjamini has now published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the flaw to alert iPhone users to the risks of this vulnerability. The researcher has also highlighted the extensive nature of the flaw as it exists on Broadcom chips running firmware version BCM4355C0. As well as iPhones, this is run by a large number of other devices, including Android smartphones, the Apple TV and smart TVs.</p>
                    <p>Beniamini was able to gain backdoor access to Broadcom chip&rsquo;s firmware, which allowed him to remotely read and write commands to the firmware, allowing easy remote control over the Wi-Fi chip. He then had the ability to interact with the backdoor to gain R/W access to the firmware by calling the "read_dword" and "write_dword" functions.</p>
                    <p>The researcher&rsquo;s exploit was tested against the Wi-Fi firmware in iOS 10.2 but it is believed to work on earlier iOS versions up to 10.3.3, given adjustments are made depending on the version.</p>
                    <p>The advice for users is to update iPhones to iOS 11 given that it is impossible to discover if your device is running the firmware version BCM4355C0.</p>