A cybersecurity student has pointed out to Apple that there is a vulnerability in the webcam on Macs that could give hackers full control over the device.
Thanks to his invention Ryan Pickren was awarded a cash prize of USD 100,500 from the company's bug bounty program. Previously he had discovered camera vulnerabilities in iPhone and Mac.
According to Pickren, the webcam vulnerability on the Mac is related to a series of issues with Safari and iCloud that Apple claims have fixed. Before they are fixed, a malicious website can launch an attack by exploiting this vulnerability.
Pickren explained that the attack could give hackers full access to all web-based accounts, from iCloud to PayPal, plus permission to use microphones, cameras and screen sharing.
The same hacker hack can eventually gain full access to the entire file system of the device. This allows them to exploit Safari's web archive data, the system browsers use to store local copies of websites.
"A surprising feature of these files is that they specify a web origin from which the content should be rendered," Pickren wrote, quoted by Apple Insider.
"It's an awesome trick to let Safari rebuild the saved website context, but as the authors of Metasploit pointed out in 2013, if an attacker can somehow modify this file, they can effectively achieve UXSS [universal cross-site scripting] by design," he added.
A user has to download the web archive file, and then also open it. According to Pickren, this means Apple didn't consider it a realistic hacking scenario when it first implemented Safari's web archive.
"Indeed this decision was made almost a decade ago, when the browser security model was not as mature as it is today," said Pickren