It turns out that even a closed iPhone can break

Researchers from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany discovered that the iPhone can be at risk even when turned off. When iPhone is turned off, most wireless chips continue to work for up to 24 hours, including Bluetooth, NFC, and wireless (UWB). That way, the phone can be found via Find My and you can still have access to credit cards and digital keys. These wireless chips have direct access to a secure item and can be used to install malware on iPhone even if iOS is not running.

Wireless chips operate in Low Power Mode (LPM). Not to be confused with the energy-saving mode, which extends battery life. LPM support is implemented at the hardware level, which means this issue cannot be fixed with a software-side fix.

Researchers analyzed the security of LPM features introduced in iOS 15 and found that the Bluetooth LPM firmware can be modified to run malware on the iPhone. These loopholes have not been taken into account before and could allow hackers with system-level access to track someone’s location or launch new features on the phone. The problem is likely due to the fact that the LPM features were designed with functionality in mind and apparently little attention was paid to potential threats outside of their intended applications.

Disabling Find My will turn off the iPhone on the tracker and the app in the Bluetooth firmware is not tamper-proof. Monitoring features can be surreptitiously modified by attackers with system-level access.

Ars Technica states that most iPhone users have nothing to worry about, as third-party software requires a broken iPhone to infect. However, spyware like Pegasus can exploit a vulnerability. The results of the study were forwarded to Apple, which did not comment on the situation. Source