techcrunch.com Zack Whittaker
11:15 AM PDT · August 29, 2025
A spyware vendor was behind a recent campaign that abused a vulnerability in WhatsApp to deliver an exploit capable of hacking into iPhones and Macs.
WhatsApp said on Friday that it fixed a security bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used to stealthily hack into the Apple devices of “specific targeted users.”
The Meta-owned messaging app giant said in its security advisory that it fixed the vulnerability, known officially as CVE-2025-55177, which was used alongside a separate flaw found in iOS and Macs, which Apple fixed last week and tracks as CVE-2025-43300.
Apple said at the time that the flaw was used in an “extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” Now we know that dozens of WhatsApp users were targeted with this pair of flaws.
Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, who heads Amnesty International’s Security Lab, described the attack in a post on X as an “advanced spyware campaign” that targeted users over the past 90 days, or since the end of May. Ó Cearbhaill described the pair of bugs as a “zero-click” attack, meaning it does not require any interaction from the victim, such as clicking a link, to compromise their device.
The two bugs chained together allow an attacker to deliver a malicious exploit through WhatsApp that’s capable of stealing data from the user’s Apple device.
Per Ó Cearbhaill, who posted a copy of the threat notification that WhatsApp sent to affected users, the attack was able to “compromise your device and the data it contains, including messages.”
It’s not immediately clear who, or which spyware vendor, is behind the attacks.
When reached by TechCrunch, Meta spokesperson Margarita Franklin confirmed the company detected and patched the flaw “a few weeks ago” and that the company sent “less than 200” notifications to affected WhatsApp users.
The spokesperson did not say, when asked, if WhatsApp has evidence to attribute the hacks to a specific attacker or surveillance vendor.
This is not the first time that WhatsApp users have been targeted by government spyware, a kind of malware capable of breaking into fully patched devices with vulnerabilities not known to the vendor, known as zero-day flaws.
In May, a U.S. court ordered spyware maker NSO Group to pay WhatsApp $167 million in damages for a 2019 hacking campaign that broke into the devices of more than 1,400 WhatsApp users with an exploit capable of planting NSO’s Pegasus spyware. WhatsApp brought the legal case against NSO, citing a breach of federal and state hacking laws, as well as its own terms of service.
Earlier this year, WhatsApp disrupted a spyware campaign that targeted around 90 users, including journalists and members of civil society across Italy. The Italian government denied its involvement in the spying campaign. Paragon, whose spyware was used in the campaign, later cut off Italy from its hacking tools for failing to investigate the abuse.
theregister.com 21.08.2025 - Better late than never after SharePoint assault?
Microsoft has reportedly stopped giving Chinese companies proof-of-concept exploit code for soon-to-be-disclosed vulnerabilities following last month's SharePoint zero-day attacks, which appear to be related to a leak in Redmond's early-bug-notification program.
The software behemoth gives some software vendors early bug disclosures under its Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), which typically delivers info two weeks before Patch Tuesday. MAPP participants sign a non-disclosure agreement, and in exchange get vulnerability details so that they can provide updated protections to customers more quickly.
According to Microsoft spokesperson David Cuddy, who spoke with Bloomberg about changes to the program, MAPP has begun limiting access to companies in "countries where they're required to report vulnerabilities to their governments," including China. Companies in these countries will no longer receive "proof of concept" exploit code, but instead will see "a more general written description" that Microsoft sends at the same time as patches, Cuddy told the news outlet.
Microsoft did not respond to The Register's inquiries.
In late July, China-based crews – including government goons, data thieves, and a ransomware gang – exploited a couple of bugs that allowed them to hijack on-premises SharePoint servers belonging to more than 400 organizations and remotely execute code.
Redmond disclosed the two SharePoint flaws during its July 8 Patch Tuesday event, and a couple weeks later admitted that the software update didn't fully fix the issues. The Windows giant issued working patches on July 21 to address its earlier flawed fixes, but by then the bugs were already under mass exploitation.
This led some to speculate that whomever was exploiting the CVEs knew about them in advance – and also knew how to bypass the original patches.
"A leak happened here somewhere," Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), told The Register in July. "And now you've got a zero-day exploit in the wild, and worse than that, you've got a zero-day exploit in the wild that bypasses the patch, which came out the next day."
One possible explanation: Someone leaked details from the MAPP update to Beijing.
Childs said ZDI was able to poke holes in the initial patches. China does not lack talented security researchers capable of doing likewise.
At the time, Microsoft declined to answer The Register's specific questions about what role, if any, MAPP played in the SharePoint attacks. "As part of our standard process, we'll review this incident, find areas to improve, and apply those improvements broadly," a Microsoft spokesperson told us in July.
Microsoft today declined to comment on its internal investigation.
Childs today told The Register that the MAPP change "is a positive change, if a bit late. Anything Microsoft can do to help prevent leaks while still offering MAPP guidance is welcome."
"In the past, MAPP leaks were associated with companies out of China, so restricting information from flowing to these companies should help," Childs said. "The MAPP program remains a valuable resource for network defenders. Hopefully, Microsoft can squelch the leaks while sending out the needed information to companies that have proven their ability (and desire) to protect end users."
Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with spyware made by Paragon. Apple says it has fixed the bug that was used to hack their phones.
The Citizen Lab wrote in its report, shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, that Apple had told its researchers that the flaw exploited in the attacks had been “mitigated in iOS 18.3.1,” a software update for iPhones released on February 10.
Until this week, the advisory of that security update mentioned only one unrelated flaw, which allowed attackers to disable an iPhone security mechanism that makes it harder to unlock phones.
On Thursday, however, Apple updated its February 10 advisory to include details about a new flaw, which was also fixed at the time but not publicized.
“A logic issue existed when processing a maliciously crafted photo or video shared via an iCloud Link. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals,” reads the now-updated advisory.
In the final version of its report published Thursday, The Citizen Lab confirmed this is the flaw used against Italian journalist Ciro Pellegrino and an unnamed “prominent” European journalist
It’s unclear why Apple did not disclose the existence of this patched flaw until four months after the release of the iOS update, and an Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment seeking clarity.
The Paragon spyware scandal began in January, when WhatsApp notified around 90 of its users, including journalists and human rights activists, that they had been targeted with spyware made by Paragon, dubbed Graphite.
Then, at the end of April, several iPhone users received a notification from Apple alerting them that they had been the targets of mercenary spyware. The alert did not mention the spyware company behind the hacking campaign.
On Thursday, The Citizen Lab published its findings confirming that two journalists who had received that Apple notification were hacked with Paragon’s spyware.
It’s unclear if all the Apple users who received the notification were also targeted with Graphite. The Apple alert said that “today’s notification is being sent to affected users in 100 countries.”
The compliance company said the customer data exposure was caused by a product change.
ompliance company Vanta has confirmed that a bug exposed the private data of some of its customers to other Vanta customers. The company told TechCrunch that the data exposure was a result of a product code change and not caused by an intrusion.
Vanta, which helps corporate customers automate their security and compliance processes, said it identified an issue on May 26 and that remediation will complete June 4.
The incident resulted in “a subset of data from fewer than 20% of our third-party integrations being exposed to other Vanta customers,” according to the statement attributed to Vanta’s chief product officer Jeremy Epling.
Epling said fewer than 4% of Vanta customers were affected, and have all been notified. Vanta has more than 10,000 customers, according to its website, suggesting the data exposure likely affects hundreds of Vanta customers.
One customer affected by the incident told TechCrunch that Vanta had notified them of the data exposure. The customer said Vanta told them that “employee account data was erroneously pulled into your Vanta instance, as well as out of your Vanta instance into other customers’ instances.”
Veeam released security updates today to address two Service Provider Console (VSPC) vulnerabilities, including a critical remote code execution (RCE) discovered during internal testing.
VSPC, described by the company as a remote-managed BaaS (Backend as a Service) and DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) platform, is used by service providers to monitor the health and security of customer backups, as well as manage their Veeam-protected virtual, Microsoft 365, and public cloud workloads.
Cisco on Dec. 2 updated an advisory from March 18 about a 10-year-old vulnerability in the WebVPN login page of Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software that could let an unauthenticated remote attacker conduct a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack.
In its recent update, the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) said it became aware of additional attempted exploitation of this vulnerability in the wild last month.
Mondays are for checking months of logs, apparently, if MFA's not enabled
This one is a privesc bug yielding SYSTEM privileges for any VDI user, which is actually a lot worse than it might initially sound since that’s SYSTEM privileges on the server that hosts all the applications and access is ‘by design’ - allowing an attacker to impersonate any user (including administrators) and monitor behaviour, connectivity.
Who doesn't love abusing buggy appliances, really?
A case study on advanced fuzzing techniques for network services.
Ransomware affiliates exploit a critical security vulnerability in SonicWall SonicOS firewall devices to breach victims' networks.
A vulnerability in Microsoft Copilot Studio could be exploited to access sensitive information on the internal infrastructure used by the service, Tenable reports.
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-38206 (CVSS score of 8.5) and described as a ‘critical’ information disclosure bug, has been fully mitigated, Microsoft said in an August 6 advisory.
The vulnerabilities allowed one security researcher to peek inside the leak sites without having to log in.
CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in its own test software for the mass-crash-event it caused last week.
A Wednesday update to its remediation guide added a preliminary post incident review (PIR) that offers the antivirus maker's view of how it brought down 8.5 million Windows boxes.
The company updated an advisory about a bug affecting the MOVEit tool, warning a “newly identified vulnerability in a third-party component" had elevated the risks.
A researcher has found a way to impersonate Microsoft corporate email accounts, which could make phishing attacks harder to spot.
Durant plusieurs heures, ChatGPT a présenté un comportement inattendu, générant des réponses illogiques et des créa
The critical bug that could lead to a remote attack via voice call is one of 26 vulnerabilities affecting hundreds of Qualcomm chipsets.
Among other things, bug allows code running inside a VM to crash hypervisors.
