Lockdown mode is coming for iPhones, iPad tablets and Mac computers in the fall. It is intended to better protect users who are threatened by particularly sophisticated attacks on behalf of the state.
Politicians, journalists and activists are often targeted by secret services trying to obtain data via vulnerabilities in the software of devices. There are also companies like the Israeli company NSO, whose monitoring software Pegasus has also been used successfully against iPhones. In the future, Apple will let such particularly vulnerable users protect their devices better with the Lockdown Mode (blocking mode). The function is not suitable for normal users because it comes with considerable restrictions.
The mode will be available for iPhones, iPads and Mac computers in the fall. At the start there will be the following protection functions:
Apple has filed a lawsuit against NSO for allowing iPhone users to be spied on. The company has always claimed that it only sells its technology to security agencies. According to the findings of IT experts, for example from the Canadian Citizen Lab, Pegasus is also said to have been used against journalists and political activists from authoritarian governments.
Apple wants to pass on possible compensation payments from the NSO process to IT security researchers – and is also supporting them with ten million dollars (around 9.8 million euros). Citizen Lab founder Ron Deibert said he hopes to use the money to set up a broader network of experts.
In the attacks, the hackers prefer to use security gaps that are not yet generally known. Apple and other companies offer rewards for finding such vulnerabilities so they are not misused for such purposes. Apple is now doubling the maximum payment for particularly serious vulnerabilities to two million dollars.
