Hundreds Of Millions Of iPhones Can Be Hacked With A New Tool Found In The Wild

A phone hacking technique capable of taking over

any of hundreds of millions of iOS devices

has appeared in the wild,

in the hands of multiple hacker groups

in an easily reusable form.

That means if you haven't updated your iPhone,

you should do it now.

Let me explain.

Researchers at Google and cyber security firms,

IVerify and Lookout have revealed the discovery

of a sophisticated tool known as DarkSword.

that can instantly and silently hack iPhones

that visit infected websites

to essentially steal any information stored on the device.

DarkSword doesn't affect Apple devices

using the latest version of iOS, iOS 26,

but devices running the previous version of iOS, iOS 18,

which still accounts for as many

as a quarter of all iPhones remain vulnerable.

This new hacking technique has appeared just weeks

after we at WIRED reported on a separate,

even more sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit

known as Coruna,

which Google said was in use by what it described

as a Russian state-sponsored espionage group.

DarkSword appears to have a different creator,

but researchers found it was being used

by those same Russian spies

and was like Coruna embedded in components

of otherwise legitimate Ukrainian websites.

It was also according to Google,

used by hackers to compromise the phones

of victims in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Malaysia.

That suggests DarkSword is being passed around

or sold to multiple hacker groups,

and it's likely only a matter of time

until it's hitting users in Western countries too.

In fact, the Russian spies who used it most recently

left it in a fully reusable form

on the websites where it was found,

complete with helpful comments from the developer

left in the code explaining how to use it.

The appearance of two different powerful

iPhone hacking techniques in just one month

implies an increasingly active market for the resale

of exploits that once were considered extremely rare

and only to be used in highly targeted attacks

against individual victims.

What was once really only a worry for opposition,

politicians, journalists, activists,

or other high risk targets

may now be a concern for everyone.

An Apple spokesperson told WIRED

that IOS's most stringent security setting Lockdown Mode

does protect users from both Coruna and DarkSword,

and noted that Apple has released security updates

protecting against both hacking techniques.

And the company wrote in a statement

that keeping software up to date

remains the single most important thing users can do

to maintain the high security of their Apple devices.

So, yes, update your iPhone.

And for more on DarkSword, read our full story at WIRED.com.