2y ago

AirDrop cracked by China, revealing phone number & email

The Beijing institute developed the technique to crack an iPhone’s encrypted device log to identify the numbers and emails of senders who share AirDrop content, the city’s judicial bureau said in an online post. Police have identified multiple suspects via that method, the agency said, without disclosing if anyone was arrested. “It improves the efficiency and accuracy of case-solving and prevents the spread of inappropriate remarks as well as potential bad influences,” the bureau said.

Further read: https://sfj.beijing.gov.cn/sfj/sfdt/ywdt82/flfw93/436331732/index.html

Technology @beehaw.org

Lee Duna @lemmy.nz

2y ago

AirDrop cracked by China, revealing phone number and email

9to5mac.com /2024/01/09/airdrop-cracked-by-china/

39 comments

Or China is just saying they cracked Air Drop to try to scare protestors from using this feature. If they cracked it, why would they make it public that they cracked it when they could catch dissidents using it without their knowledge? Not to mention making it public puts pressure on Apple to patch it, which would destroy their access. Doesn’t make much sense to make this public if it is true.
- Whenever a government or government agency announces a successful exploit, I presume they've already exhausted it and moved on to another one that won't be patched or publicly divulged for many years.
  
  I don't buy it. This smells like a way of causing fear in those who want to share information.
- It would be easy for apple to debunk this if it wasn't true. I'd stay away from it and use proven secure means.
  
  There’s no way to prove that something is secure. (It reduces to the halting problem.)
  
  How can Apple debunk it?
  If I told you I know of a way by which I can "hack" the lock of your house to enter it, how can you prove whether I'm lying or not? Specially if I'm not willing to show you how I do it, and I haven't given you any proof of having actually done it that you can try to dispute.
  
  Why would they? They have all their production logistics in China.
Apple has been taking massive Ls after Ls wrt the security of their iPhones in recent times. It's almost as if magically branding your products "private and secure" doesn't work.
- Finding an exploit created by state-level actor is not a massive L. They have shown in the past that they are able to hack air gaped systems, weaken commonly used security standards and implant vulnerabilities into commercial software. I don't think you will find a company that is immune to this. Other than that, did they really have so many security issues recently?
  
  Read the article. The exploit was found by the state actors not created by them. Apple is ultimately responsible for the mishap due to the insecure design of the aforementioned feature.
  Even though China partially had a hand in the creation of this flaw according to the history of the feature.
  And yes, Apple has been a constant feature on the news for such privacy leaks of late. You just haven't been paying attention.
  
  Ordering your hardware from China makes it a tad bit easier to shoehorn backdoors in it.
- We just call them the US
Usually when one of Apple’s security measures is breached, the company would issue an update to patch it. We’d hope this will happen here, but the Chinese government is likely to apply pressure on the iPhone maker to leave the exploit unpatched – at least, on Chinese devices.
WELL, Apple? ? . . . We're waiting
- Too busy protecting iOS users from iMessages of unauthorized color.
Probably not a reliable source but you should still use Foss with strong encryption (RSA2048+ ideally)
- For airdrop? There's a foss airdrop?!
While I have little respect for Apple's overall privacy practices, this sounds a lot like the CCP making something up to scare protesters and dissidents from using AirDrop. There's no sensible reason they would be advertising such an exploit openly, especially when it could potentially be used to secretly spy on dissidents, protesters, or even used in foreign espionage. Something doesn't sit right with this.
- Well if Apple doesn't fix it, like they haven't fixed the iMessage flaws) they've known about for years, then it's still useful.
  And most people won't even know of this issue, and they'd still use Airdrop anyway, saying "I'm not interesting enough to spy on".
  iMessage lacks forward secrecy, so if I get your RSA key which never changes, I can read all your old messages and any new ones too. And that's just one issue with iMessage. And people don't know about it, and still use it, thinking it's secure. (it's pretty good in my opinion, just wish Apple would fix the issues linked article).
- Totally agree. Their logic is to hide and deny everything, and if they say something openly, it's likely a lie.
Oh China, you rascal.
This is a great podcast about the vulnerabilities China has for their own only...
Click Here: 101. Bug bounties with Chinese characteristics
Episode webpage: http://www.recordedfuture.com/podcast
Media file: https://chrt.fm/track/DG79BE/traffic.megaphone.fm/RFEI8990516258.mp3?updated=1704745626
LMAO hope they do another purge of CIA operatives https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html
only reason that I can see why they're saying they've done this has to be some kind of scare tactic
would be a bit stupid to reveal this hand otherwise
- Ahh, that makes sense. I was wondering, "Why the hell are they announcing their zero day to the Internet?"
- I agree. I'm just referring to China since this article is. They claim they figured it out but really they already have the keys to the backdoor. It was a requirement that Apple provided it to China before Apple devices could be sold in China.
  
  CIA shell company? Hah, as if they’d base all their logistics in China. Nobody said the USA was better.

39 comments