An Apple iOS is always considerable as Fast and Secure than Android. But in recent times ios loses its name for secureness after facetime bug. Another bug in ios is discovered but this time in vpn.
This iOS VPN Vulnerability is discovered by Luis, a security consultant and member of the Porton community.
How the iOS VPN Vulnerability works
When you connect to any VPN provider, the operating system of your devices closes all existing connection and reconnect it to VPN tunnel. But in iOS this will not happen, the existing connections will not close. Most connections are closed after certain time and reconnect VPN. However, some connection will not close , still run without VPN for hours. Eg: Apple push notification.
Apple’s push notification service will maintains a long connection between your device and Apple’s service which also impact another instant messaging apps like messenger or telegram and web beacons.
This Vulnerability could result in IP leaks. An attacker able to see your IP address and Ip address of the servers they are connecting to and also the server you connected are able to see your true ip address rather than vpn sever ip address.
This will be risk for people who are in counteries where surveillance are common.
Proof of vulnerability
proton team used wireshark software to capture iOS device traffic.
Below images shows , there is direct traffic between device ip and external ip that is Apple server.
10.0.2.109 = iOS device’s IP address
185.159.157.8 = ProtonVPN server
17.57.146.68 = Apple-owned IP address
Vulnerability Score calculated by proton team via CVSS: 5.3 medium
When you turn on VPN, Others only able to see traffic between your device IP and VPN sever Ip. But in this case its different.
SOLUTION BY PORTON TEAM
- Connect to any ProtonVPN server.
- Turn on airplane mode. This will kill all Internet connections and temporarily disconnect ProtonVPN.
- Turn off airplane mode. ProtonVPN will reconnect, and your other connections should also reconnect inside the VPN tunnel, though we cannot guarantee this 100%.
via: Proton Vpn