{"id":225710,"date":"2026-03-20T11:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T15:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-heres-what-you-need-to-do\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T11:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T15:25:11","slug":"millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-heres-what-you-need-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-heres-what-you-need-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of iPhones are at risk from a new spyware \u2013 here&#8217;s what you need to do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theshortcut.com\/p\/millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-here-is-what-you-need-to-do\">Millions of iPhones are at risk from a new spyware \u2013 here&#8217;s what you need to do<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theshortcut.com\/p\/millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-here-is-what-you-need-to-do\">https:\/\/www.theshortcut.com\/p\/millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-here-is-what-you-need-to-do<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-20 11:14:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.theshortcut.com\">www.theshortcut.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>(Credit: Apple)<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HpTV!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp\" width=\"576\" height=\"59\" data-attrs=\"{\"src\":\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HpTV!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp\",\"srcNoWatermark\":null,\"fullscreen\":null,\"imageSize\":null,\"height\":59,\"width\":576,\"resizeWidth\":null,\"bytes\":6166,\"alt\":\"\",\"title\":null,\"type\":\"image\/webp\",\"href\":null,\"belowTheFold\":false,\"topImage\":false,\"internalRedirect\":\"https:\/\/www.theshortcut.com\/i\/187856472?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp\",\"isProcessing\":false,\"align\":null,\"offset\":false}\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HpTV!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HpTV!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HpTV!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HpTV!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e07d13-0280-4f19-8c95-cabbaa45a57d_576x59.webp 1456w\" sizes=\"100vw\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>\ud83d\udea8 iPhone users still running iOS 18 should update their devices to avoid potential infection from new spyware<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\ud83d\udde1\ufe0f Known as DarkSword, the attack has been used by Russian and Chinese attackers on devices in Ukraine, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Malaysia so far<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\ud83d\ude2c It works by a user clicking on a nefarious link on a spoofed website, and performs a digital hit-and-run on the data it wants before exiting<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\ud83d\udc4d Apple has advised users on iOS 18.4 to 18.7 to update to iOS 26.3, where these vulnerabilities have been fixed<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you\u2019re still running an iPhone with iOS 18 installed, then you\u2019ll want to update your device as soon as possible to minimize the risk of some new spyware that\u2019s been found.<\/p>\n<p><span>As per <\/span>Time<span>, hundreds of millions of iPhones could be susceptible to hackers using a new malware tool known as DarkSword if their software hasn\u2019t been recently updated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The news comes after an investigation by Google and cybersecurity firms Lookout and iVerify found that hackers, mainly from China and Russia, have been using this DarkSword tool to extract information from iPhone users on certain older versions of iOS.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from the three firms observed DarkSword attacks that have targeted users in Ukraine, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Malaysia. They did not report any hacks on American targets so far.<\/p>\n<p>DarkSword is an exploit chain type of attack, which works by a hacker using multiple software vulnerabilities to infiltrate a user\u2019s device and pull information from it. The fact they\u2019re combined exploits allow hackers to attack a device from multiple entry points, making them harder to defend against.<\/p>\n<p><span>A report from the <\/span>Google Threat Intelligence Group<span> recently said that DarkSword uses \u201csix different vulnerabilities to fully compromise a vulnerable iOS device.\u201d To be specific, it\u2019s using these vulnerabilities to gain higher-level permissions and privileges in the phone\u2019s OS to access data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Lookout<span> found that the attack starts with the&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theshortcut.com\/p\/millions-of-iphones-are-at-risk-from-a-new-spyware-here-is-what-you-need-to-do\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Millions of iPhones are at risk from a new spyware \u2013 here&#8217;s what you need&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!JKRH!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe549f8b5-a8df-4963-af13-6c10e5e54232_1456x819.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[31,35,69,95,77,32],"class_list":["post-225710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone","tag-exploit","tag-hacker","tag-ios","tag-ios-18","tag-ios-26","tag-malware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225712,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225710\/revisions\/225712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}