U.S. intelligence said that the Chaos iPhone remote takeover exploit was used against the minority ethnic group before Apple could patch the problem. A Chinese security researcher working with the internet security and antivirus company Qihoo 360 unveiled an intricately woven exploit in January 2019. The researcher, Qixun Zhao, dubbed the exploit Chaos, for good reason. It worked as a drive-by malware download, only requiring that the iPhone user visit a web page containing his malicious code. It would have made a superb spying tool, seeing how it would let an attacker easily take control of even the newest, most up-to-date iPhones, enabling a snooper to read a victim s messages.
Source: https://threatpost.com/iphone-hack-spying-china-uyghurs/165950/