For nearly six years, Apple has neglected to fix a bug that enables anyone to effectively create false or misleading news headlines that appear to come from credible sources.
We originally covered the flaw in early 2019, and warned about it again during the 2020 election cycle. Disconcertingly, Apple still has not fixed the flaw, even in its latest operating systems; iOS and iPadOS 18.0.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.0.1, were released on October 4.
Apple’s ongoing lack of a fix is especially concerning given that we’re just a month away from the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and early voting has already begun in some states. In the last election cycle, several “Big Tech” companies (such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google) were accused of engaging in or enabling election interference. Somehow, Apple evaded scrutiny; this flaw received almost no media coverage whatsoever, aside from Intego’s report four years ago.
Let’s break down what exactly Apple has done wrong, the potential impact, and how to report any abuse of the flaw.
In this article:
The flaw was originally discovered in February 2019 by the editorial team at MacRumors, who framed it as something readers could “have a bit of fun with.” It existed in iOS 12, and could be exploited on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. At the time, it wasn’t exploitable on Macs; however, Macs could receive deceptive iMessages sent from mobile devices.
Apple’s Safari browser includes a feature related to link sharing. If you select (highlight) text within a Web page and then tap on the Share button, you can “quote” the selected portion of the page for the recipient when you share the link via Apple’s Messages app. The feature is intended to allow users to include a direct quote from an article, embedded within the iMessage link preview.
However, Apple does not limit the preview text selection to the contents of the page as received from the Web server—and therein lies the flaw.
Users can type something into a page’s search bar (or any other text field), select the text they just typed, tap Safari’s Share button, and then tap the green-and-white Messages icon to send it to any iMessage recipient—either an individual or a group.
The bug as it appeared in iOS 13. It still works the same in iOS 18.
Nothing prevents a user from typing a misleading headline or other deceptive text into a field and making it appear to be part of the page, visible in the preview.
When we last covered this in 2020, the Safari flaw was only exploitable on iOS and iPadOS, meaning you couldn’t send deceptive link previews from Safari on macOS. (Mac users could be victims, though; the Messages app on macOS would display misleading previews sent from Safari on someone’s mobile device.)
But as of 2024, the same flaw also exists in Safari for macOS; we’ve confirmed that it’s present in both macOS Sonoma and the new macOS Sequoia. At some point in the past few years, Apple evidently introduced the same undesirable behavior to the Mac version of Safari.
Alarmingly, every news site we tested was exploitable via this attack method. We also found that it was possible to send fake quotes that appear to be from the official campaign sites of Kamala Harris or Donald Trump as well.
Following are real screenshots showing, as a demonstration, example fake headlines that could be sent from the ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and New York Times homepages. (They are watermarked with “fake headline” to help prevent abuse.)
Although the example headlines below are mostly silly and unbelievable, one can imagine much more subtle and deceptive headlines or quotes that could potentially influence voters into changing how they might cast their ballots—or avoid voting—on election day.
Exploit demo; not seen in the wild. Watermarked to prevent abuse.
Although in 2020 there were a few sites we tested that seemed to be resistant to the bug, including CBS News and Forbes, we found that these sites are exploitable as of 2024.
When MacRumors editors originally discovered this flaw, they called it “fun” and noted that it could easily be exploited for harmless pranks. However, as we pointed out in February 2019, we feel that all iMessage users should take caution, as the flaw could also potentially be used in more sinister attacks. We warned that this could be exploited as a means to try to get financial investors to buy or sell stocks in a panic based on false headlines, for example.
Since it seems like this would be an easy thing for Apple to fix—by simply disallowing user-input fields to be quoted as part of a link preview—it’s difficult to imagine why Apple has allowed the flaw to persist for nearly six years after its discovery.
We invited Apple to comment on this story, but company representatives had not responded by publication time. If Apple provides a statement, we will update this article.
It is impossible to know with any degree of certainty whether this bug has been exploited to spread misinformation to Apple users about this (or any other) election, especially if it were used in carefully targeted, small-scale attacks.
Although we have not yet been made aware of any real-world abuse of this exploit, we do know that this bug has been widely known for nearly six years, and Apple has chosen not to do anything about it. Apple’s neglect has left ample opportunity for foreign or domestic actors to engage in targeted campaigns to deceive individuals in specific communities or demographics, including in swing states.
If you become aware of any real-world abuse of this bug for any unethical and illegal purposes, whether election interference, stock market manipulation, or otherwise, please report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), share the details publicly to warn others, and consider leaving a detailed comment on this article. You can also contact the author of this article via direct message on 𝕏/Twitter or Signal.
We covered this Safari flaw in the context of the 2020 election four years ago, in October 2020; you can read our coverage here:
Apple neglects to fix “fake headlines” bug usable for election interference
You can also find our original coverage of this Safari bug, from February 2019, here:
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