Google Has Found Flaws In Apple's Privacy Feature, Again!

Dhir Acharya - Jan 27, 2020

Google's security engineers found that a privacy feature developed by Apple, supposed to protect users from being tracked, turned out to help attackers.

For years, Apple has touted its privacy as a selling point for its products, and the company has developed several tools to ensure user privacy for its customers. What if you found out that all those claims were not so true? What if a privacy feature turned out to be a vulnerability?

google-has-found-flaws-in-apple-safari-privacy-feature-1 — Google once again found flaws in Apple's privacy feature

According to a paper published a few days ago, Google’s security engineer group Arxiv.org came across many flaws in Safari, a browser developed by Apple. The flaws reportedly allow potential hackers to look into users’ history as well as enable websites to track users over the web.

The flaws were found in the Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature (ITP) in the browser, which was unveiled for the first time in 2017. In fact, the feature was meant to keep users safe from cookies tracking them.

ITP logs their use and blocks websites from doing any activity. The websites would be termed as “prevalent domains” as soon as it noticed that the sites were sending data, it would then add them to an ITP list.

However, the logging process gives potential hackers a way to access a user’s detailed web history. A site was able to check the ITP status of certain domains and could manipulate the list, posing security threats to users. But Apple said that the company has fixed the flaws.

google-has-found-flaws-in-apple-safari-privacy-feature-2 — The flaws were found in Apple's browser Safari

Google’s researchers used to find vulnerabilities in Apple’s systems before. Last year, for example, the Do Not Track feature helped sites track users better by creating some kind of digital fingerprint. Acknowledging the flaws, in December 2019, Apple announced that it had fixed the bugs.

In a statement, WebKit engineer John Wilander at Apple said:

>>> What Apple And Google Should Do To Improve iOS And Android

10 Comments

Sort by Newest | Popular

Melinda Adele

2023-01-17 04:17:01

My husband has been frequently deleting all messages for the last couple of days from his phone and he didn’t know i was peeping at him, then i asked him why he was deleting all messages from his phone but he claimed that his phone memory was full and needed more space. Immediately I went in search of a hacker who can get me deleted information and contents from my husband’s phone and luckily for me i came across this reputable ethical hacker Me Fred, this hacker got the job done for me and provided me with results and i saw that my husband has been lying to me. He was simply deleting all pictures, call logs, chats and text messages between him and his secret lover so i wont get to see what he has been doing at my back. Thank God for reputable hackers who are ready to help. I must say am really impressed with the services i got from The hacker Detective and am here to say a very big thank you: contact him on fredvalcyberghost@gmail.com and you can text, call him on +1423)641 1452

Like (0) Reply (0)

Charles Charles

2022-11-15 14:38:52

Have you ever wanted to spy on your husband phone or wanted to monitor their phone. you may want to know what is happening in their life or how they are communicating with someone else. or maybe you want to protect them from ex either way. you can contact kelvinethicalhacker@gmail.com, talks about it with kelvin. you want to hack your husband whatsapp account text messages on iphone or android phone remotely he can provide you ways of doing it without installing any software on the target device. you will get complete access to whatsapp, facebook, kik, viber, messenger, text messages and other app on the phone. you can reach him call +1(341)-465-4599. for better information....

Like (0) Reply (0)

KIM O PATTERSON

2022-09-11 00:03:24

I got access to GPS location, email, Whatsapp, SMS, Phone logs and gallery. overwhelm is a short word for such brilliance.  Now I have unnoticeable and unrestricted access to his phone, including emails, facebook, whatsapp, text and calls. All he asked for was his phone number. And As a parent too, you'd want to know what your kids do on a daily basis on any social platforms, kindly contact hackerspyville@gmail.com for generous work. WWW.HACKERSPYVILLE.COM

Like (0) Reply (0)

View more comments