Apparently, Apple isn’t going to patch iOS 18.6.2, meaning I either risk my information with DarkSword or my sanity with iOS 26.

Say what you want about Microsoft — please! use profanity! — but they wouldn’t let a zero-interaction, full-exfil bug go unfixed on a seven month old release.

@gknauss Hey! Do you have a source for this?

@mttaggart Nothing explicit, but reading between the lines…

iOS 26 has been fixed. iOS 18 for devices that can’t run iOS 26 has been fixed. And those who can run iOS 26 but don’t want to? [Conspicuous silence.]

https://www.wired.com/story/hundreds-of-millions-of-iphones-can-be-hacked-with-a-new-tool-found-in-the-wild/

Hundreds of Millions of iPhones Can Be Hacked With a New Tool Found in the Wild

A powerful iPhone-hacking technique known as DarkSword has been discovered in use by Russian hackers. It can take over devices running iOS 18 that simply visit infected websites.

WIRED

@gknauss I think the thing is to move to 18.7.3, which is patched.

For devices running versions of iOS prior to 18.6, DarkSword uses CVE-2025-31277, a JIT optimization/type confusion bug which was patched by Apple in iOS 18.6. For devices running iOS 18.6-18.7, DarkSword uses CVE-2025-43529, a garbage collection bug in the Data Flow Graph (DFG) JIT layer of JavaScriptCore which was patched by Apple in iOS 18.7.3 and 26.2 after it was reported by GTIG. Both exploits develop their own fakeobj/addrof primitives, and then build arbitrary read/write primitives the same way on top of them.

I'm unaware of a compelling reason or hardware limitation to not upgrade from 18.6 to 18.7

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/darksword-ios-exploit-chain/

The Proliferation of DarkSword: iOS Exploit Chain Adopted by Multiple Threat Actors | Google Cloud Blog

DarkSword is a new iOS exploit chain that leverages multiple zero-day vulnerabilities to fully compromise iOS devices.

Google Cloud Blog
@mttaggart 18.7.X isn’t offered to me, since I’m on a iPhone 15 Pro. It’s either up to 26 or staying at 18.6.2.
@gknauss Ah I see, and you'd rather not run into the Liquid Glass ceiling. That does seem to be an issue!
@mttaggart @gknauss same for SE 2022 (funnily, my SE 2016 does get patched…)