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: sfj.beijing.gov.cn/sfj/sfdt/ywdt82/…/index.html

yogthos,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

LMAO hope they do another purge of CIA operatives www.nytimes.com/…/china-cia-spies-espionage.html

southernwolf,
@southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

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.

BearOfaTime,

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).

possiblylinux127, (edited )

Probably not a reliable source but you should still use Foss with strong encryption (RSA2048+ ideally)

Scolding7300,

For airdrop? There’s a foss airdrop?!

kworpy,

You guys are gullible as shit if you think this is real. This is yet another bullshit scare tactic by the Chinese government. Also these articles are hardly even sourced and are just copypasted from other news sites to farm clicks.

possiblylinux127,

Yeah this does smell fishy. The Chinese government is quick to manipulate and lie and I doubt they would want to get people not to use a service they can break.

WebTheWitted,

Ahh, that makes sense. I was wondering, “Why the hell are they announcing their zero day to the Internet?”

homesweethomeMrL,

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

rdri,

Too busy protecting iOS users from iMessages of unauthorized color.

ebits21,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

Oh China, you rascal.

Outtatime,
@Outtatime@sh.itjust.works avatar

China has deals with apple in that the government can spy on any Apple devices for Chinese citizens.

TheAnonymouseJoker,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

You know who actually has real deals with Apple (CIA shell company)? Something something Snowden Assange PRISM FISA gag…

China is not the problem. If you think USA Freedom™ companies are so moral, then why do USA companies not stop business with China and pay back over a trillion dollars worth of debt? Or how about letting Assange free in “western democracy”, or Snowden out of Russia with zero risk of getting JFK’d?

Outtatime,
@Outtatime@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

TheAnonymouseJoker,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

To me it seems more like a custom for US/West tech cos to engage in this spying behaviour, as they themselves also benefit from it (ads -> capitalism -> money + data for AI + helping insurance cos and FICO/VantageScore), besides their 3 letter daddies. The “China!” thing is hogwash, because China is engaging in basically the same or lesser surveillance practices as 5/9/14 Eyes governments for much lesser time.

possiblylinux127, (edited )

I think we should use Foss software because no single entity can be trusted.

And just to be clear, China is very much bad. I’m not sure why you are suddenly complaining about the US. Also I’m pretty sure China - US relations are not great so I’d imagine the CIA isn’t exactly in league with China. Just look at the number of Pandas in the US.

bappity, (edited )
@bappity@lemmy.world avatar

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

Apollo2323,

This is a great podcast about the vulnerabilities China has for their own only…

Click Here: 101. Bug bounties with Chinese characteristics

Episode webpage: www.recordedfuture.com/podcast

Media file: chrt.fm/track/DG79BE/…/RFEI8990516258.mp3?updated…

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