Apple updates iPhone after Mideast spyware discovery

A botched attempt to break into the iPhone of an Arab activist using previously unknown espionage software has triggered a global upgrade of Apple’s mobile operating system, researchers said Thursday. The spyware took advantage of three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple’s mobile operating system to take complete control of iPhone devices, according to reports published Thursday by the San Francisco-based Lookout smartphone security company and internet watchdog group Citizen Lab. Both reports fingered the NSO Group, an Israeli company with a reputation for flying under the radar, as the author of the spyware.