this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
54 points (93.5% liked)
Apple
17467 readers
293 users here now
Welcome
to the largest Apple community on Lemmy. This is the place where we talk about everything Apple, from iOS to the exciting upcoming Apple Vision Pro. Feel free to join the discussion!
Rules:
- No NSFW Content
- No Hate Speech or Personal Attacks
- No Ads / Spamming
Self promotion is only allowed in the pinned monthly thread
Communities of Interest:
Apple Hardware
Apple TV
Apple Watch
iPad
iPhone
Mac
Vintage Apple
Apple Software
iOS
iPadOS
macOS
tvOS
watchOS
Shortcuts
Xcode
Community banner courtesy of u/Antsomnia.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was under the impression that interaction with Apple’s servers required some kind of “proof” (honor system really) that you’re using an Apple device, which used device ID that was spoofed; just like how Hackintosh had done for push notifications for years.
Worth noting that Hackintosh got to a point where someone wrote scripts to generate random strings to brute force until they encounter a valid device ID, so they’d literally assume someone else’s legitimate device to get push notifications.
Thanks for digging into this and confirming my understanding!
On a quick glance, this looks to be more secure the the old Hackintosh push notification (where it was based solely on a single device ID/serial number), but rather, some kind of certificate based identity system. This makes it more secure because without access to Apple's private signing keys, it should be very difficult to get a certificate signed by Apple to spoof the interaction. Though, I wonder how were the devices getting it in the first place, and if that part would be the next vector that'd need to be compromised (i.e.: if you get a signed certificate during device activation, then it'd be possible to swipe a signed certificate from a Mac you own; or that activation process itself becomes the next attack vector).
Having interacted very briefly with Eric Migicovsky a long time ago (due to Pebble), this does not surprise me that much. He's a great guy, and appears to want to do the right thing to help everyone. Beeper wanted to do it in the cloud with Mac systems/VMs, which is a costly endeavour. This POC would allow the interaction to run natively without themselves essentially MITM'ing all users, so it would save their company a lot of money. POC was done allegedly by some high school kid, and given Eric's Pebble fame, I think he's just thrilled that they could save some money and help some kid get started.
In all cases, it is certainly interesting to see how this has been playing out, and I'd be curious to see how this continue to play out, because I doubt this will be the end of this story.
Beeper mini still needed a device serial for it to register with apple’s serial which makes it easy for Apple to see a swath of fake device serials being registered.