Apple alerts exploit developer that his iPhone was targeted with government spyware

Summary

Earlier this year, a developer was shocked by a message that appeared on his personal phone: “Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone.” “I was panicking,” Jay Gibson, who asked that we don’t use his real name over fears of retaliation, told TechCrunch. Gibson, who until recently built surveillance technologies for Western government hacking tools maker Trenchant, may be the first documented case of someone who builds exploits and spyware being themselves targeted with spyware. “What the hell is going on? I really didn’t know what to think of it,” said Gibson, adding that he turned off his phone and put it away on that day, March 5. “I went immediately to buy a new phone. I called my dad. It was a mess. It was a huge mess.” At Trenchant, Gibson worked on developing iOS zero-days, meaning finding vulnerabilities and developing tools capable of exploiting them that are not known to the vendor who makes the affected hardware or software, such as Apple. “I have mixed feelings of how pathetic this is, and then extreme fear because once things hit this level, you never know what’s going to happen,” he told TechCrunch. But the ex-Trenchant employee may not be the only exploit developer targeted with spyware. According to three sources who have direct knowledge of these cases, there have been other spyware and exploit developers in the last few months who have received notifications from Apple alerting them that they were targeted with spyware. Apple did not respond to a request for comment from TechCrunch. Contact Us Do you have more information about the alleged leak of Trenchant hacking tools? Or about this developer’s story? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or by email. The targeting of Gibson’s iPhone shows that the proliferation of zero-days and spyware is starting to ensnare more types of victims. Spyware and zero-day...