[HN Gopher] The Bay Area German bar that brought down Apple's fa...
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The Bay Area German bar that brought down Apple's famed iPhone
security
Author : wallflower
Score : 137 points
Date : 2023-06-10 14:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| pyrophane wrote:
| The only interesting part of this article to me is what happened
| to Powell: he continued to work at Apple on iOS for another 7
| years before leaving the company.
|
| I also like this bit:
|
| "Apple forced its own ban from the bar on Powell -- though it
| doesn't sound like that ban was enforced very strictly."
|
| I wonder what that looked like.
| therein wrote:
| Back when I joined Apple, this story was told in the
| orientation training.
|
| I remember some sketchy details to the story that seem to have
| gone unmentioned but it has been a long time and I am very
| unclear on the specifics so I will not mention them here.
| Especially since Apple really cares about these kind of things.
| eevilspock wrote:
| @dang this is a clickbait title. "iPhone security" is entirely
| misleading.
| [deleted]
| temac wrote:
| The notion that this was a "security breach" is weird. Did it
| contain private keys to production apple servers?
| newaccount74 wrote:
| The design was the big secret that all their security protocols
| were supposed to protect.
|
| Revealing the design was the security breach.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Their security protocols were pretty lax, if they allowed
| someone to take a secret prototype to a bar, and to use it in
| the bar.
| therein wrote:
| It had "development silicon" instead of "production silicon".
| At the very very least that means you can use `sudo` and `su`
| after logging in with the well known "alpine" credentials.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Security doesn't only have to imply software / online security.
| There's physical security as well, which this seems to be
| referring to.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| Physical security predates computer security by millennia
| temac wrote:
| The implication of a loss of a physical gadget, no matter the
| hype that exists around it, has low intrinsincal security
| severity. If the object could be otherwise used to have
| severe impacts, that would be another story.
| gumby wrote:
| Companies have security protocols for whatever they want to
| protect. What they consider protecting is their business.
| New product prototypes, or just random possible product
| explorations are a common example. And the protocols they
| use (special enclosures, training people on how to not be
| obvious) are figured out the same way they are in
| computing, In fact the core terminology we use in computer
| security comes from physical security.
|
| And security protocols go back thousands of years. You can
| read about them in ancient literature,
| [deleted]
| MAGZine wrote:
| So leaks about future products isn't a security threat? I
| think it is. That could definitely affect the stock price.
| Depending on the leak, it could definitely be more of an
| impact than a ip or data security breach. What will people
| do with digitizer firmware source? Other than bad pr, what
| affects does a data breach of customer records have on a
| company?
| gsich wrote:
| Wouldn't call that security, no.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Apple had IP they didn't want to leak,
| and it got leaked. That alone was a security breach.
| samwillis wrote:
| It's interesting to look back at the commentary on HN from then:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1323561600&dateRange=custom&...
| jackfoxy wrote:
| Redwood, California? Was this article written by ChatGPT? Did a
| local human editor even read this?
| mangosteenjuice wrote:
| I can see how "Redwood City" could become "City of Redwood",
| and then just "Redwood", through multiple steps. I had never
| heard of it before moving to norcal.
| asveikau wrote:
| Neil Young, who lives nearby, called it simply "Redwood" in
| 1972's hit _Heart of Gold_. (I 've been to Hollywood; I've
| been to Redwood.)
| cronix wrote:
| I see spelling mistakes all of the time in print media, and
| they've had spellcheck for 30+ years.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Do human editors catch every mistake? No.
| jnsie wrote:
| > One of the first things Volker did after navigating the throng
| of TV reporters was email Jobs. "I email Steve, and I said,
| 'Steve, this is what happened. What do you want me to do? Can you
| please reach out and let me know? How do you want me to handle
| the situation?'" he said, noting that Jobs' email was readily
| available online.
|
| Thought it a bit odd that one of the first things the bar owner
| did was email Steve Jobs. Like...why?
| phantom784 wrote:
| Used to go there all the time - had no idea it was the bar where
| the iPhone prototype was lost (which happened long before I moved
| to the Bay).
| KyeRussell wrote:
| [dead]
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| > _the most infamous security breach_
|
| The XcodeGhost supply chain attack by the CIA infected a hundred
| million devices with malware. Quixun Zhaos chaos exploit chain
| took full control over iPhones from a drive by on a website and
| was used by china as part of the ugyhur genocide. And the
| cyberwar mercenary group NSO keeps targeting journalists and
| opposition around the world with what feels like an endless
| supply of exploits for apple devices.
|
| But somehow the hype for the iPhone4 starting three month earlier
| than planned in 2010 is called the _" the most infamous"_. Apple
| PR at it's best, telling people the worst that can happen is
| loosing a phone at a bar.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Xcodeghost wasn't made by the CIA. It used a technique similar
| to one described in leaked CIA documents, but the author was a
| Chinese national.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| "Infamous" has nothing to do with scale. It's entirely based on
| how well known something is. This incident had worldwide
| attention almost immediately and for weeks. Many articles were
| written at the time, and followup articles since (some of which
| are linked here). By all definitions of the word, it tracks.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| Not all definitions. Mine may be a bit old school, meaning
| publicly disgraced. Yours is more modern meaning slightly
| embarrassing. Both share that fame means "being spoken of"
|
| IMHO no one wants to be infamous, under the classical
| definition. Infamous people have a search warrant by the
| federal police. Infamous people are the ones your parents
| tell you not to interact with.
|
| No matter how often the "no bad PR" mantra is spoken, Steve
| Wozniak isn't going to wear a t-shirt referencing what i
| would consider their most infamous security breach. He isn't
| gangster enough for a teardrop tattoo.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| The definitions are irrelevant to the topic at hand, which
| is that nobody seems to have heard of the attack.
|
| Something can't be infamous (or regular famous) if nobody
| has heard of it, and that's the issue people have with your
| claim.
|
| It might be a "publicly disgracing" attack but that alone
| doesn't make it infamous. It still has to be well known,
| and quite simply, the iPhone case is so well known that
| it's practically impossible to beat.
| Animats wrote:
| Yeah, it was embarrassing overreaction by Apple. It was just
| another iteration of the iPhone. This used to be a thing in
| the auto industry, with reporters trying to get pictures of
| new car styling. Now nobody cares. Same for phones. Version
| N+1 has rounder corners. Big deal.
| blowski wrote:
| I've heard of the 2010 one, not the other you mentioned.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Infamous is about notoriety, not scale. It's not about what
| happened, it's about who knows.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I had to read this sentence a few times before I realized it was
| the decision and not the child: "My wife and I even decided to
| have our third child on our way to a dinner at Gourmet Haus
| Staudt."
| ralph84 wrote:
| My first read was that it was the copulation.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > "Powell kept his job in spite of the lost prototype and worked
| on Apple's iOS software for another seven years before leaving
| the company in 2017."
|
| There's actually a photo, taken as a joke, by Steve Wozniak you
| can find online. It shows him drinking a beer, holding an iPhone
| in the other hand, and he's wearing a T-Shirt that reads: "I went
| drinking with Gray Powell and all I got was a lousy iPhone
| prototype."
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/woz-has-fun-with-lea...
|
| Thankfully, it appears Steve Jobs took his wrath out at Gizmodo
| than Powell.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| The site guilted me into turning off my adblocker. I'm
| sympathetic to local media outlets.
|
| My god. That site is comically unusable. There is just no way to
| read an their article in peace.
|
| So when they, too, inevitably have to fold, let it be known, I
| tried.
| thebigwinning wrote:
| You owe them nothing and the guilt you feel is an exploitation
| of your courtesy.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I had no problems using 1Blocker for iOS in Safari and no guilt
| trip or ads.
| samstave wrote:
| Uh, I have ublock origin and such...
|
| Site is clean as a whistle for me:
|
| (zoomed all the way out so you can see the whole page:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/I4EaG3A.png -
|
| Edit: I appear to have "wooshed" the point... Sorry fam.
| thfuran wrote:
| So you didn't try at all.
| mucle6 wrote:
| I tried turning off Adblock and wow.... I didn't even mind the
| ads, but the loading just never stopped. Some of the article
| images wouldn't load because they were trying to load so many
| ads.
| Animats wrote:
| Try the EFF's Privacy Badger. I didn't see any ads there. Just
| click "Continue without Disabling".
| getcrunk wrote:
| Man if y'all think this is bad try tom's hardware. It usually
| crashes chrome on iOS for me after reloading on its own
| rajbot wrote:
| If you have an Apple News/One subscription you can read it as
| this link. Much more readable, and the publisher still gets ad
| revenue:
|
| https://apple.news/AlNrxUYEHQPGfrBna1YfVqQ
| annexrichmond wrote:
| I had to delete Apple News because Apple was forcibly
| inserting its own channels that I could not remove or say
| "Not Interested", which you can normally do for all other
| channels. I recall they were BLM and COVID19; sorry that I
| don't want politics shoved in my face every day. Why can't I
| choose what I want to see?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| "I'm not interested in facts I don't agree with"
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Google news is the same. At some point it decided that I
| must follow every sniff and fart coming from a certain
| electric car tycoon, and there was no negotiating.
| rajbot wrote:
| You can. First you can just use it like Reader Mode. Safari
| -> share menu -> open in News for any HN link you click on
| that has too many popups.
|
| Or, in the News following tab, click Edit, remove all
| "suggested by Siri" topics, and block low-quality channels.
| I blocked the National Review, WSJ, USA Today, and People
| Magazine and my feed got a lot better.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| No, you can't remove the "Special Coverage" section,
| which you can't unsee in the macOS app.
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251600920
| rajbot wrote:
| Click on the special coverage section -> three dot menu
| -> block channel.
|
| Or better yet, just don't use their feed.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I did that for their World Cup coverage, and it did not
| block the channel. There was a World Cup banner with
| scores and stuff for a month. At that point I noped out
| and haven't touched it since.
| juunpp wrote:
| Because Apple, not you, owns your phone.
| tsuujin wrote:
| My god that is so much better.
| digitalengineer wrote:
| European here. I clicked the privacy pop-up and did not accept
| the ad and tracking cookies. No ads..
| bmacho wrote:
| No ads (adguard..), loads instantly, also in Europe
|
| edit: it seems that the Americans get our ads too, ah sweet
| schadenfreude
| IndySun wrote:
| Europe currently, no pop ups, no ads. And no place holders.
| Page loads fast.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I believe Firefox/Mozilla use sfgate as a stress test.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| It was sure a good stress test for my eyes.
| paulirish wrote:
| SFGate has been a notorious test site for Chrome web
| performance folk too. Here's a perf audit from 8 years ago: h
| ttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1viSX0vNYPeDB9iWLaOyAg6Fa..
| .
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Oh good gravy I just tried. It's over 50% ads.
| ant6n wrote:
| > It's over 50% ads.
|
| Like 1999...
| spacemadness wrote:
| Everyone involved should feel bad and really if this is the
| only way for them to figure out how to survive, they should
| just go out of business.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Media used to exist based off of classified ad sales, then
| tech companies absorbed all that cash flow. After that,
| most local media died.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| Reader mode every time.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| This is functionally no different to using an adblocker for
| the site.
| faangsticle wrote:
| Its better because it gets rid of crap layout
| efdee wrote:
| Interesting. I turned off my adblocker out of curiosity but I'm
| not seeing anything special. Coming from the EU though, maybe
| that has something to do with it.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I tried too. Awful. And the biggest chumbox I've ever seen in
| my damn life at the bottom.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > My god. That site is comically unusable. There is just no way
| to read an their article in peace.
|
| Lurk more f.....
|
| https://archive.is/JngjW
| juunpp wrote:
| That's because you haven't tried Mercury News.
| benzible wrote:
| SFGate was originally the online version of the SF Chronicle,
| starting in the 90's. For whatever reason, they wanted a
| distinct online brand. Now the online version of the Chronicle
| is hosted at sfchronicle.com and SFGate continues on under the
| same ownership (Hearst) as its own clickbaity thing. Not much
| in the way of original reporting.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Funnily enough, I get the GDPR pop-up, agree to nothing and the
| site is readable
| ce4 wrote:
| Firefox mobile's reader mode was usable
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| I have spent countless hours there over the years. It was an
| after work place everyone could agree on. As you change jobs over
| the years, you still end up there, and you will almost always run
| into someone you know.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| I know Gray personally and have been able to hear the whole story
| from him, which is amazing and one of my favorite stories from
| the bay, ever. He's a great dude.
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(page generated 2023-06-11 23:01 UTC)