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Turning Off Your iPhone Won’t Stop Malware Installation

May 17, 2022

New functionality will allow you to find an iPhone even if it is turned off. That new functionality comes with an unintended consequence as described in a Motherboard post. When the iPhone is turned off, some of the chips continue to get power, which allows the phone to send signals to aid in locating it. A group of researchers from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany found that one of the chips that enables Bluetooth can be exploited even if the iPhone is turned off.

This means an attacker can do some nastiness to the phone via Bluetooth. The research paper stated, “[Low-Power Mode] is a relevant attack surface that has to be considered by high-value targets such as journalists, or that can be weaponized to build wireless malware operating on shutdown iPhones.” Despite this finding, the sky is not falling. The attacker needs to hack and jailbreak the iPhone in order to access the Bluetooth chip. Call me crazy, but if you jailbreak an iPhone, you have much bigger concerns than dealing with Bluetooth.

We need to be aware of all the security entrance points a smartphone provides. Our mobile devices are becoming an extension of a body part and allow access to all sorts of information. I can imagine a lot of bad things happening in our lives. We start cars with a phone, control our hearing aids, monitor pacemakers, control home security, etc. Using your brain may become a novelty.

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