Tech
Someone has publicly leaked an exploit kit that can hack millions of iPhones
Last week, cybersecurity researchers uncovered a hacking campaign targeting iPhone users that used an advanced hacking tool called DarkSword. Now someone has leaked a newer version of DarkSword and published it on the code-sharing site GitHub.
Researchers are warning that this will allow any hacker to easily use the tools to target iPhone users running older versions of Apple’s operating systems who have not yet updated to its latest iOS 26 software. This likely affects hundreds of millions of actively used iPhones and iPads, according to Apple’s own data on out-of-date devices.
“This is bad. They are way too easy to repurpose,” Matthias Frielingsdorf, the co-founder of mobile security startup iVerify, told TechCrunch on Monday. “I don’t think that can be contained anymore. So we need to expect criminals and others to start deploying this.”
Frielingsdorf said that these new versions of DarkSword spyware share the same infrastructure with the ones he and his iVerify colleagues analyzed previously, although the files are slightly different. The files uploaded to GitHub are uncomplicated, just HTML and JavaScript, he said, meaning anyone can copy and paste them and host them on a server “in a couple minutes to hours.”
“The exploits will work out of the box,” Frielingsdorf said. “There is no iOS expertise required.”
Kimberly Samra, a spokesperson for Google, which previously analyzed the DarkSword exploit, said the company’s researchers agree with Frielingsdorf’s assessment.
Contact Us
Do you have more information about Darksword, Coruna, or other government hacking and spyware tools? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or by email.
A security hobbyist who goes by the handle matteyeux also told TechCrunch that it is indeed trivial to use the leaked DarkSword samples. Matteyeux wrote in a post on X Monday that he was able to hack an iPad mini tablet running iOS 18, the previous generation of the operating system that is vulnerable to DarkSword, using the “in the wild” DarkSword sample that is circulating online.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke told TechCrunch that the company was aware of the exploit targeting devices running older and out-of-date operating systems and issued an emergency update on March 11 for devices unable to run recent versions of iOS.
“Keeping your software up to date is the single most important thing you can do to maintain the security of your Apple products,” O’Rourke said, adding that devices with updated software were not at risk from these reported attacks and that Lockdown Mode would also block these specific attacks.
A spokesperson for Microsoft, which owns GitHub, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The code, which TechCrunch is not linking to, as it can be used in active attacks, contains several comments that describe how the exploits work and how to implement them.
One comment, likely written by one of the developers who worked on DarkSword, says that the exploit “reads and exfiltrates forensically-relevant files from iOS devices via HTTP,” referring to stealing information from a person’s iPhone or iPad and sending the data over the internet to an attacker-controlled server.
“This payload should be injected into a process with filesystem access class,” the comment reads.
In one case, the code references “post-exploitation activity” and describes process after the malware has gained access to the person’s phone and grabs its contents, including their contacts, messages, call history, and iOS keychain, which stores Wi-Fi passwords and other secrets, and dumps them into a remote server.
Another file contains references to uploading data to a popular Ukrainian apparel website, though TechCrunch could not immediately determine why. DarkSword was allegedly used by Russian government hackers against Ukrainian targets.
This particular spyware works specifically against iPhones and iPads running iOS 18, according to iVerify, Google, and Lookout, which also previously analyzed the DarkSword malware.
According to Apple’s own numbers, about one-quarter of all iPhone and iPad users are still running iOS 18 or earlier on their device. With more than 2.5 billion active devices, that likely equates to hundreds of millions of people whose devices are vulnerable to DarkSword attacks.
That’s why Frielingsdorf recommends everyone upgrade their iPhone’s operating system.
The discovery of DarkSword came only a few weeks after researchers discovered another advanced iPhone hacking toolkit known as Coruna. As TechCrunch reported, Coruna was originally developed by the defense contractor L3Harris, whose Trenchant division makes hacking tools for the U.S. government and its allies.
Tech
Mirage raises $75M to continue building models for its AI video editing app Captions
Mirage, the maker of video-editing app Captions, has raised $75 million in growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF).
Over the past year, the startup has made significant changes both to its product and corporate identity. The startup rebranded from Captions to Mirage to position itself as an AI lab that produces different models and also caters to industries like advertising and marketing. It has also trained a model specifically for pacing, framing, and attention dynamics in short videos.
The company also switched to a freemium model in January 2025 to better compete with apps like ByteDance’s CapCut and Meta’s Edits, which was released later in the year. It now offers a video-creation suite as well, with some of the features from Captions, that lets companies create and distribute videos in bulk.
Mirage’s co-founder and CEO Gaurav Misra said that the company aims to create more models. However, he didn’t specify what its next set of models would do, only saying that they would be focused on “assembly intelligence” — basically putting together a video using different sources and components.
Speaking about Mirage’s new audio model, which it claims can preserve accents in generated videos, Misra said, “The reason for the audio model was that we noticed that there was a gap in accents because a lot of our users are international. Accents are just very important. There was my own dad’s example. He was trying to use the app, and he would say a word in an Indian accent, and it would always make it sound like he’s talking in an American accent.”
According to data from analytics firm Appfigures, Captions has been downloaded over 3.2 million times in the last 365 days and has brought in $28.4 million in in-app revenue. Misra said the platform has been used to create more than 200 million videos so far, and that it has attracted an international user base, with only 25% of its revenue coming from the U.S.
Currently, Mirage’s marketing suite is available on the web, and Captions largely offers a mobile-first editing suite. The company aims to merge these two platforms to better target small businesses that may be looking to create marketing videos.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Pranav Singhvi, managing director of General Catalyst’s CVF fund, said Mirage has great product-market fit.
“Mirage’s business equation is extremely figured out. They know exactly how to spend that dollar and generate a very attractive ROI. If you think about the market they’re going after, it’s in a sense an infinite total addressable market. You can start out in the creator world, the influencer world, and then use that as a mechanism to sell to enterprises as well,” Singhvi told TechCrunch.
There are tons of companies building AI video-generation pipelines for marketing. Canva has introduced several tools around marketing creation and tracking, while platforms like D-ID, HeyGen, Webflow, and Avataar have been releasing new models and features.
However, Singhvi seems confident about Mirage’s positioning and unit economics. “Regardless of what the other tools are out there, Mirage is clearly ahead of the pack from a unit economics standpoint. Ultimately, it’s all a reflection of their product,” he said.
Mirage aims to use the fresh capital to fuel growth, and expand in high-growth Asian markets.
Tech
Spotify’s new SongDNA feature maps how your favorite songs are connected
Spotify announced on Tuesday the global rollout of a new feature, SongDNA, that lets listeners more deeply explore their favorite music.
Now available to Premium subscribers on iOS and Android, the feature provides an interactive experience that lets users trace other components of a song beyond the singer, songwriter, or musician. With SongDNA, listeners could explore other connections, like who may have covered that song, plus other information like samples, interpolations, or what other projects the song’s collaborators have also been involved in.
The idea is something of an expansion to the existing “About the Song” feature, allowing Spotify’s customers to learn more about the writers, producers, and collaborators behind their favorite music. This could lead users to see how artists are connected to and influenced by one another’s work. For those in the music industry itself, the feature could help them find new collaborators, producers, engineers, and others they may want to work with.
It also offers those in the background of music production more visibility and credibility than they’ve previously had in the streaming age.
TechCrunch reported in October that Spotify was developing the SongDNA feature as a way to help users discover music through a song’s credits, after references to the feature were spotted in the app’s code by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong. The following month, the company officially confirmed its plans to launch SongDNA in early 2026.
In part, SongDNA has been built on top of data from the online community-built music database WhoSampled, which Spotify acquired last year. The feature also competes with TIDAL’s interactive credits, which similarly focus on the contributors behind the songs you stream.
“By bringing collaborators, samples, and covers together in one place, we’re making it easier for fans to discover new music and see how songs connect and come to life—while giving songwriters, producers, and rightsholders meaningful recognition for the role they play in creating it,” said Jacqueline Ankner, Spotify’s head of Songwriter & Publisher Partnerships, in a statement.
The feature is rolling out now in beta to Premium users globally across iOS and Android devices, with plans for the rollout to be complete sometime in April.
Tech
Snapchat’s new ‘AI Clips’ Lens format turns photos into five-second videos
Snapchat announced on Tuesday that it’s launching AI Clips in Lens Studio, its platform that lets creators design and publish AR and AI effects called Lenses. The new Clips are an AI-powered Lens format that transforms a single photo into a five-second video.
Unlike open-ended text-to-video tools, AI Clips are designed as a closed-prompt experience, where Lens creators design the Lens, and users can tap it to generate a video from their own photos.
For example, a Lens creator could design a Lens that allows users to generate a video of themselves walking down a red carpet using their own photo.
Snapchat says both experienced and new developers can use the new Lens format to turn a single prompt into a published Lens in minutes without the need for external tools.
AI Clips are available to Snapchat users who are subscribed to that platform’s Lens+ offering, which costs $8.99 per month. As its name suggests, Lens+ gives users access to exclusive Lenses and AR experiences, along with the features available as part of the standard Snapchat+ subscription.
“For the first time, developers can build and publish photo-to-video AI directly to Snapchat from the GenAI Suite in Lens Studio,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post. “There’s currently nothing else on the market that combines closed-prompt AI video generation with direct photo input, real distribution, and monetization.”
Lens creators enrolled in Lens+ Payouts, Snapchat’s monetization program that allows developers to earn money from their Lenses, can earn revenue from the AI Clips they create.
Snapchat isn’t the only platform focused on letting users create AI clips from their own photos, as YouTube announced last week that it was rolling out “Reimagine,” a new feature that lets users transform a single frame from an existing YouTube Short into an eight-second clip using their own photo.
The launch of AI Clips comes the same day that Snapchat announced that users created nearly two trillion Snaps, or 63,000 Snaps per second, in 2025.
Shark devices on sale ahead of Amazons Big Spring Sale: Stick vacuums, stain removers, hair tools
The best early Big Spring Sale deals at Amazon include record-low prices on portable power stations
