dogloose

When it comes to data privacy and security, Apple has rarely shied away from taking credit for its encryption and security. Even in the tech industry, analysts have time to time lauded the company for its relatively secure operating system when compared to its immediate competitors. But now an alleged flaw in its ecosystem, exposed by two researchers, may allow personal data in Apple's iPad and iPhone devices to be intercepted.

According to Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk, when a user copies any miscellaneous data, it gets stored on Apple's[1] general pasteboard (commonly known as clipboard). This data temporarily stored to the device's memory can be accessed by all apps, thereby, risks revealing private information such as a user's GPS coordinates, passwords and banking details.

"iOS and iPad operating system apps have unrestricted access to the system-wide general pasteboard," the duo noted[2] in a post published on Monday. They added saying, "A user may unwittingly expose their precise location to apps by simply copying a photo taken by the built-in Camera app to the general pasteboard. Through the GPS coordinates contained in the embedded image properties, any app used by the user after copying such a photo to the pasteboard can read the location information stored in the image properties." 

To illustrate how one can access information, Mysk and Bakry published a video on their blog in which the researchers created a rogue proof-of-concept (PoC) app called KlipboardSpy and an iOS widget named KlipSpyWidget to show how data saved in general pasteboard gets accessed by apps. You can watch the video here:

Bakry and Mysk further reclaimed[3] in their post that they first submitted this article and source code to Apple on January 2,...

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