Apple Rushes Out Rare iOS 18 Patch As DarkSword Hack Targets Millions Of Older iPhones

When a device hits end-of-life status, and it stops receiving updates for its operating system, it’s only a matter of time before malicious actors find some sort of exploit. That’s exactly what happened with a piece of malware dubbed DarkSword, which targets users running iOS 18. Apple has since released a security patch to mitigate this threat to its users, however, including for Liquid Glass holdouts.

Security firm Malwarebytes describes DarkSword as “a full‑chain iOS exploit kit that strings together six vulnerabilities in WebKit, Safari, the dynamic loader, and the kernel to go from a browser visiting a malicious website to full device compromise.” What makes DarkSword particularly dangerous is that it requires no input on behalf of the user to infect the device; simply opening a compromised website is enough for the malware to take hold.

The severity of this exploit is what pushed Apple to ...