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Here's What Apple Retail's New Machine to Update iPhones in the Box Looks Like
(www.macrumors.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Apple are much much smarter than me, so I'm sure have mitigated against this, but this feels like a securirty nightmare waiting to happen:
Bad guy gets hold of the technology, works out an exploit to send unofficial update and then "patches" a containership full of iPhones.
Trusted certificate exchange negates that scenario.
I’m sure it’s fool-proof and no state-level actor will ever find a way around it
It’s basically the same as updating the iPhone over usb. There has not been a chance to have the iPhone run a modified iOS update in over 10 years now iirc.
It is not like people have not tried.
Why would they attempt to go through unsold iPhones? They can simply force Apple to push updates to all existing iPhones.
If I’m (say) the UK intelligence service and I want to spy on (rolls dice) a group of people in Switzerland- it much easier for me to intercept their packages and patch them in transit then having to talk to Apple.
I disagree. If the packages aren't routed through UK, you'd have to work with other countries secret service, distribution companies, and you have much more legal troubles to consider.
Because clearly a secret service of one country could never infiltrate FedEx’s distribution depot in another.
Because the secret service of one country acting in another country where they don't have jurisdiction is an international political crisis that could lead to war. Don't play dumb.
One means a country forcing a company acting inside that country to do something. The other means one country having to ask another country to be allowed to force a company acting inside the other country to do something. See where one is much easier?
The irony is strong in this one. But if you really want to believe that intelligent agencies don’t work covertly overseas, I’ll leave you to it.
I didn't say that, not sure what you're arguing against?
The idea that it's in any way easier to monitor for your targets ordering new phones, then covertly moving personnel into that specific shipping facility, having them find the package, open it, flash it, close it and sending it back on its way while hoping they don't install a new software update, compared to going to a company and saying "deploy this update to that phone" makes absolutely no sense, but you do you.
I like iPhones, but this is just reckless, it is only a matter of time untill an exploit is found to bypass the certificate check.
For the time being the system is secure, but claiming 100% security based on a certificate checking routine is just dumb.
Look at the PS3, for years it was thought to be unhackable, then exploits were found to bypass the security.
Now, obviously this is unlikely to happen at stores selling new devices as the access to them will be limited, but you can't just claim absolute security.
Will this feature be turned off when the phone is activated? What if it is forgotten about, or deemed unneeded? I could absolutely see a bad guy setting up a system to trigger the update mode, which probably will have lower security since Apple will only expect the devices to activate the system in a store.
What could the bad guy do with the phone in that mode? Probably quite a bit more than the user wants.
Good that you pointed that out, I am sure Apple has not thought about that obvious threat vector. /s
I am sure they have, as an IT guy I just dislike broad statements about how security is not an issue because of X.
Says you, who made a broad statement how this is reckless without knowing more details about it.
Simply stating an oppinion based on a decade of experience.