A recent leak of a new version of the hacking tool DarkSword on GitHub poses significant risks for iPhone users. Cybersecurity experts indicate that this development could enable hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in older versions of Apple’s operating systems, affecting potentially hundreds of millions of devices.
Matthias Frielingsdorf, co-founder of mobile security firm iVerify, emphasized the ease of use of the leaked files, which consist of basic HTML and JavaScript, allowing anyone to deploy them quickly. He expressed concern that the infrastructure of the new DarkSword variants appears similar to those previously analyzed by his team, suggesting a continuity in malicious capabilities.
Both Frielingsdorf and representatives from Google have warned that no specialized knowledge of iOS is necessary to utilize the leaked spyware effectively. A security enthusiast known as matteyeux confirmed this, stating he successfully hacked an iPad mini running an earlier iOS version using the leaked DarkSword sample.
In response to these threats, Apple acknowledged the situation and had previously issued an emergency update on March 11 to address vulnerabilities in devices that have not yet been updated to the latest iOS 26.