So, in March, ESET experts wrote that they tested and confirmed the problem for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Amazon Echo and Kindle, Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy, Xiaomi Redmi, Raspberry Pi 3, as well as for Wi-Fi routers from Asus and Huawei. In total, the Kr00k vulnerability was thought to threaten about a billion different gadgets.

“The Kr00k problem is associated with encryption, which is used to protect data packets transmitted over Wi-Fi. Typically, such packets are encrypted with a unique key, which depends on the Wi-Fi password, which established the user. However, for vulnerable chips, this key is reset to zero in case of the disassociation process, for example a temporary shutdown, which usually occurs due to a bad signal”, – told ESET researchers.

Thus, attackers can provoke the transition of the device into a long dissociation state and receive Wi-Fi packets intended for it. Then, by exploiting the Kr00k bug, attackers can decrypt Wi-Fi traffic using a “zero” key.

Following the release of ESET’s February report, Broadcom and Cypress engineers have released fixes for their products.

However, ESET experts have now warned that the chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek are vulnerable to similar flaws.

In the case of Qualcomm, the vulnerability received the identifier CVE-2020-3702, and using this bug, an attacker (after dissociation) can get access to confidential data.

“The difference with the attack described above is that the data captured in this case is not encrypted at all, while exploiting the original Kr00k problem at least requires the use of a “zero” key”, – said the experts.

Researchers tested this vulnerability using the D-Link DCH-G020 Smart Home Hub and Turris Omnia wireless router as examples. However, any other devices that use vulnerable Qualcomm chips, can be also affected by the new issue.

Qualcomm released a patch for its proprietary driver in July 2020, but the situation is complicated by the fact that some vulnerable devices are using open source Linux drivers, and it is unclear if the problem will be fixed there. Qualcomm said they have already provided OEMs with all the necessary instructions, and users can only wait for the release of patches from specific manufacturers.

In addition, ESET experts found that MediaTek chips, which are widely used in Asus routers, as well as in the Microsoft Azure Sphere development kit, also do not use encryption at all.

“Azure Sphere uses the MediaTek MT3620 microcontroller and targets a wide variety of IoT applications, including smart homes, commercial, industrial and many other sectors”, — write the researchers.

MediaTek released fixes for this issue in March and April, and Azure Sphere received patches in July 2020.

Amid release of a number of exploits for the original Kr00k vulnerability, the researchers have published a special script that will help to find out if the device is vulnerable to the original Kr00k or new variations of this attack.

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A “text bomb” will affect the operation of the device, even if the user simply received a notification from Messages or WhatsApp, or from social networks (for example, Twitter). That is, the problem can affect thousands of people.

After receiving such a malicious notification, the device freezes, sometimes stops responding at all, and eventually crashes.

“The string of text, which we aren’t going to share here, includes the Italian flag emoji and characters in the Sindhi language. When an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch receives a notification with this text string, things get wonky. Sometimes, your device will crash, while other times it completely stops responding to touch input, and much more”, — report 9to5Mac magazine journalists.

According to 9to5Mac, now malfunctioning characters are increasingly spreading on Twitter and other social networks, and for the first time they were published on an unnamed channel or group in Telegram.

“Details of where this text string originated are somewhat unclear, but the original source seems to have been a Telegram group. It’s now going viral on Twitter and other social media platforms, though, so it’s worth being aware of it. It can spread through theoretically any application, including Twitter, Messages, and more…”, — said in 9to5Mac.

Initially, it was reported that in order to provoke a failure, the notification should contain emoji of the Italian flag, as well as Sindhi symbols. However, the well-known blogger EverythingApplePro demonstrated that the Italian flag is not necessary for this.

Since there is no fix yet, and it is unclear when Apple will release the patch, users are advised to temporarily turn off notifications.

Let me remind you that this is not the first bug of this kind. For example, in 2018, iOS users suffered from a similar error related to the Telugu language symbol, common in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tellingan. Then all these applications reacted to the problematic symbol (జ్ఞా), like to the classic “text bomb”, that is, they “hung up” and went into an endless cycle of reboots.

And recently for iOS was discovered a new exploit, with the help of which China traced the Uyghurs.

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In total, Picren discovered seven vulnerabilities in the Apple browser and the Webkit browser engine (CVE-2020-3852, CVE-2020-3864, CVE-2020-3865, CVE-2020-3885, CVE-2020-3887, CVE-2020-9784 , CVE-2020-9787), three of which can be linked together and used to track users through the camera and microphone on an iPhone, iPad or Mac.

For such an attack, just a little is required: for the victim to enter a malicious site. No other interaction is required, and a malicious site can pretend to be a popular legitimate resource and abuse the permissions that the victim would grant only to a trusted domain.

“If a malicious site needs to access the camera, all that it needs to mask itself as a reliable site for video conferencing, such as Skype or Zoom”, — the researcher notes.

Corrections for bugs found by the specialist were released as part of Safari 13.0.5 (release dated January 28, 2020) and Safari 13.1 (release dated March 24, 2020).

Picren explains that Safari creates access to devices that require specific permissions (such as camera, microphone, location, and so on) for each individual site. This allows individual sites, such as the official Skype site, to access the camera without asking for user permission with each start.

In iOS, there are exceptions to this rule: if third-party applications must require user’s consent to access the camera, then Safari can access the camera or photo gallery without any permissions.

Exploitation of the problems became possible due to the way the browser parses URL schemes and processes the security settings for each site. In this case, the researcher’s method works only with sites already open in the browser.

“The most important fact is that the URL scheme is completely ignored,” the expert writes. – This is a problem, as some schemes do not contain a meaningful host name at all, for example file:, javascript: or data:. Simply, the error makes Safari think that the malicious site is actually trusted one. This is due to exploitation of a number of shortcomings (how the browser parses the URI, manages the web origin and initializes the secure context).”

In fact, Safari cannot verify that the sites adhered to Same Origin policies, thereby granting access to another site that should not have been granted permission at all. As a result, the site https://example.com and its malicious counterpart fake://example.com may have the same permissions. Therefore, you can use file: URI (for example, file:///path/to/file/index.html) to trick the browser and change the domain using JavaScript.

“Safari believes we are on skype.com and I can download some kind of malicious JavaScript. Camera, Screen Sharing microphone will be compromised after opening my local HTML file”, — Ryan Pickren writes.

Similarly works the blob URL: (for example, blob://skype.com) can be used to run arbitrary JavaScript code, using it to directly access the victim’s webcam without permission.

Even worse, the study showed that unencrypted passwords can be stolen in the same way, since Safari uses the same approach to detect sites that require automatic password completion.

PoC exploits and a demonstration of the attacks described are available on the specialist blog.

I should also remind you that recently researcher remotely hacked iPhone using only one vulnerability.

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