Leaked DarkSword iOS Exploit Chain 'P7' Now Steals Crypto Wallet Seeds and Keystores
The leaked DarkSword iOS exploit chain, originally attributed to state-level customers, has been repurposed by criminal actors to target cryptocurrency wallets. One visit to a malicious webpage on iOS 18.4–18.7 is enough for the implant to appear inside SpringBoard within seconds, decrypt the keychain on-device, locate seed phrases and keystore files, and send them to the attacker’s server.
DarkSword comprises six vulnerabilities, three of which were zero-days at the time of use: CVE-2025-31277 and CVE-2025-43529 in JavaScriptCore, CVE-2026-20700 in dyld, CVE-2025-14174 in ANGLE, and two XNU issues (CVE-2025-43510, CVE-2025-43520). Apple patched the flaws across iOS 18.7.2, 18.7.3, 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3.
Security firm iVerify first described the criminal P7 variant on 8 October. Researchers subsequently recovered a third build from a public sandbox archive dated 29 September 2026. The kit uses the lure domain iospc8[.]com, registered only six days earlier, and the previously unreported command server y21t8bcya6q9b7155a[.]cc.
Byte-for-byte comparison with the original GHOSTBLADE sample published by GTIG shows that P7 leaves the complex loader, TaskRop library and MIG-filter bypass untouched. Only the business-logic modules were rewritten: the new c2_agent.js drops Telegram, WhatsApp and iCloud collectors, adds direct Ethereum keystore decryption using PBKDF2/AES-CTR, and targets ten specific wallet bundle IDs including imToken, TokenPocket, Phantom and TronLink.
A second innovation, labelled “P7 Phase 2”, uses the AppleKeyStore service as an oracle. After copying keychain-2.db into /tmp, the implant opens an IOKit channel to securityd, unwraps class keys locally, and writes the decrypted JSON to disk before the agent exfiltrates it. This produces far smaller, immediately usable wallet packages than the original GHOSTBLADE behaviour.
Further passive reconnaissance revealed the “qqtime” delivery infrastructure active since at least July 2026. The same loader serves both the older Coruna chain for iOS 13–17.2.1 and DarkSword for iOS 18.x from a single iframe, confirming the hybrid “DarkCoruna” deployment pattern first noted by iVerify.
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