Overview
- Apple, which told TechCrunch on Friday that no Lockdown Mode device has been breached, underscored the feature’s role for people at high risk of targeted hacking.
- Amnesty International’s security lab says it has found no case of an iPhone compromised by mercenary spyware when Lockdown Mode was enabled at the time of the attack.
- Citizen Lab documented Lockdown Mode blocking Pegasus and Predator attempts, and Google researchers found some spyware halts infection once it detects the feature.
- Lockdown Mode reduces attack paths by blocking most message attachments, limiting complex web code in Safari, stopping auto‑joins to insecure Wi‑Fi, and restricting unknown FaceTime callers and wired connections.
- Recent leaks of tools like DarkSword and Coruna show how exploit kits endanger unpatched devices, and Apple has issued threat alerts in more than 150 countries to warn likely targets.