- The Guardian Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019
(^20) National
Google: monitoring malware
installed on hacked iPhones
Alex Hern
An unprecedented iPhone hacking
operation, which attacked “thousands
of users a week” until it was dis-
rupted in January, has been revealed
by researchers at Google’s external
security team. The operation, which
lasted two and a half years, used a
small collection of hacked websites
to deliver malware on to the iPhones
of visitors.
Users were compromised simply by
visiting the sites: no interaction was
necessary, and some of the meth-
ods used by the hackers aff ected fully
up-to-date phones. Once hacked, key
information on the user was avail-
able to the attackers. Their location
was uploaded every minute; their
device’s keychain, containing all their
passwords, was uploaded, as were
their chat histories on popular apps
including WhatsApp, Telegram and
iMessage, their address book, and their
Gmail database.
The one silver lining was that the
implant was not persistent: when the
phone was restarted, it was cleared
from memory unless the user revis-
ited a compromised site.
However, according to Ian Beer, a
security researcher at Google: “ Given
the breadth of information stolen, the
attackers may nevertheless be able to
maintain persistent access to various
accounts and services by using the sto-
len authentication tokens from the
keychain, even after they los t access
to the device .”
Beer is a member of Project Zero, a
team of white-hat [ethical] hackers at
Google who fi nd security vulnerabil-
ities in popular tech, no matter who it
is produced by. The team has become
controversial for its hardline approach
to disclosure: 90 days after it reports
a bug to the victim, it will publish the
details if the bug has not been fi xed
in that time.
In total, 14 bugs were exploited
for the iOS attack across fi ve diff er-
ent “exploit chains” – strings of fl aws
linked in such a way that a hacker can
hop from bug to bug, increasing the
severity of their attack each time.
Google said it had reported the
security issues to Apple on 1 Feb-
ruary. Apple released an operating
system update which fi xed the fl aws
on 7 February.
Leafl ets
against
relationship
lessons
‘misleading’
Nadeem Badshah
Leafl ets claiming that relationship
education lessons will encourage pri-
mary school children to masturbate
have been handed out in London.
Other material seen by the BBC said
parents would be “ questioned on the
day of judg ment” if they did not chal-
lenge the lessons on compulsory
relationships education in primary
schools in England and relationships
and sex education (RSE) in secondary
schools from September 2020.
The leafl ets were distributed by
the RSE School Gate Campaign group,
which has since removed the claim
that infants would be “encouraged to
masturbate” in its literature.
New fl yers say teaching resources
will introduce words such as “mastur-
bation” to pupils in junior school. This
is written in draft teaching guidance
for at least one English local authority.
The campaign said it stood by other
accusations in the leafl ets, including
that lessons on relationship education
would promote “trans genderism and
homosexual lifestyles”.
Rohit Dasgupta, a Labour coun-
cillor in Newham, east London, said
local offi cials had a duty to counter the
“misinformation”. He tweeted: “It is
extremely important to teach our chil-
dren values of equality & respect. The
government needs to grow a backbone
& support schools.”
Dasgupta said the leafl ets were a
form of intimidation and contained
“ untruths ”. He showed BBC Two’s
Victoria Derbyshire programme an
example that claimed RSE would
promote “transgenderism and homo-
sexual lifestyles” and “pervert the
course of natural child development”.
It added that “children in infant
school will be encouraged to mastur-
bate. First sexual experiences will be
encouraged by the age of 12.”
Dasgupta said parents had also
been targeted by protesters through
messaging apps and had been given
intimidating suggestions of “con-
sequences” if they did not attend a
forthcoming parents’ meeting about
RSE and warnings that they would “be
questioned on the day of judgment”.
He told the programme: “I think it’s
important that parents are told exactly
what their children are taught. But at
the end of the day the teachers, head-
teachers [and] curriculum educators
are the experts.”
The councillor added: “This is about
making sure we teach our children
about equality.”
The government wants primary
schools to cover issues including
lone parent ing, adoption and same-
sex relationships, but said it would be
for individual schools to decide what
was appropriate for each age group.
The proposal has led to leafl eting
campaigns and hundreds of mainly
Muslim campaigners protesting at the
gates of some primary schools.
In July, parents who spent five
months in mediation with teachers
at a primary school in Birmingham
over LGBT equality lessons resumed
protests after the school announced it
would be relaunching equality teach-
ing in September.
Parents of pupils at Parkfi eld com-
munity school in Saltley staged weekly
protests over the relationship lessons,
which they claimed promoted gay and
transgender lifestyles.
In March, hundreds of mainly Mus-
lim children, aged between four and
11, were withdrawn from the school
for the day.
The RSE School Gate Campaign
said: “ The majority of parents do not
agree with the current approach to sex
education, which demands ever more
explicit sex education at ever younger
ages.”
The Department for Education said
RSE was a vital subject and schools
would be supported to deliver lessons
to a high standard.
It said it was working closely with
schools that had volunteered to intro-
duce the subject next month, and was
setting up a working group including
parents, young people and represent-
atives of religious and minority groups
to consider the delivery of the lessons.
Parents with concerns were urged
to “talk to their child’s school in a calm
and constructive way”.
‘Children in infant
schools will be
encouraged to
masturbate. Sexual
experiences will be
encouraged by 12’
Claims in fl yer. The fi rst
claim was later removed
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