January 21, 2016
When Apple pushed out iOS 9.2.1 earlier this week, it fixed a nasty bug that lingered in the wild for nearly three years and could have let an attacker steal cookies and impersonate victims.
The problem stems from the little windows that pop up when you connect to a public WiFi network according to Skycure, an Israeli mobile security firm that first reported the issue way back in June 2013.
Yair Amit and Adi Sharabani, researchers with Skycure, discovered the issue and discussed it in a blog post Wednesday.
The window that pops up – the embedded browser that asks users to log in via an HTTP interface – creates a vulnerability by sharing its cookie store with Safari. If an attacker created their own public WiFi network and got an unsuspecting victim to join, they could redirect the user to an HTTP site of their choice.