A privacy vulnerability of AirDrop may trigger potential threat of nearby hacker. Eavesdropper can easily access the phone numbers and email addresses of people using the AirDrop. Researcher at a German University raised potential question to the security of AirDrop.
According to security researchers at a German university, Apple’s famous AirDrop file-sharing feature is vulnerable to hacking attempts. IT experts at Technische Universitat Darmstadt revealed this fact. An AirDrop user’s phone number and email address is discoverable by a nearby stranger due to a privacy flaw .
Privacy vulnerability in AirDrop
AirDrop’s Contacts Only option can cause this potential threat .Since, this feature utilizes a “mutual authentication system” . This mechanism confirms the presence of sender’s phone number and email address in receiver’s contact list.
Though, the procedure involves encoding of information. Yet, any intruder in close physical proximity can easily hack the data and reverse security measures using simple techniques like brute-force attacks.Researchers also claimed that Apple is already aware of the potential vulnerability of a probable AirDrop hack since May 2019. However, Apple has not addressed this issue in its subsequent software updates.
The group has suggested its alternative, Private Drop. That is not reliant on the exchange of unstable hash values. However, Apple did not respond to this potential threat in privacy vulnerability of AirDrop.
