AirDrop cracked by China, revealing phone number & email

Comments

• HeartyBeast@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The headline should be ‘China claims to have cracked Airdrop.

  There are two possible reasons for the claim - only one of which is that they have

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• WebTheWitted@beehaw.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why would China announce their zero day exploit to the Internet? FUDD.

  “You can’t trust those iPhones, only trust Chinese company phones”. – CCP, probably

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  • bl4kers@beehaw.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s not a zero day: arstechnica.com/…/hackers-can-id-unique-apple-air…

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    • WebTheWitted@beehaw.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ahh, interesting to read about the technique, thanks for the link. For anyone else curious, here’s a TLDR quote:

      In 2021, researchers at Germany’s Technical University of Darmstadt reported that they had devised practical ways to crack what Apple calls the identity hashes used to conceal identities while AirDrop determines if a nearby person is in the contacts of another. One of the researchers’ attack methods relies on rainbow tables.

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• HeartyBeast@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  From the article, this is based on this quote from a Bloomberg article.

  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.

  Two possibilities here:

  1. The Chinese authorities have cracked it.
  2. They have not, but are sufficiently worried about Airdrop that they want to chill its use by making the announcement.

  No idea which is true, but if you had an excellent way to trap subversives without their knowledge- would you announce it?

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