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iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

theguardian.com

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Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#41

Post by hirephone »

This is just the beginning.

High prices and resale values have spawned a substantial and apparently growing 3rd party repair and refurbishment market for Apple mobile devices. Beyond the dodgy corner unlock shops, multiple national chains have sprung up over the last 2 years where I live that advertise heavily on broadcast TV.

Apple clearly sees this as money left on the table and they're concerned about the emergence of a comprehensive parallel supply chain for repair parts. Bricking end-user devices is one of the few levers they've got to try and shut down this industry, since there's no way to effectively identify and pursue the upstream suppliers in mainland China.

Sucks for the users, though. I wonder if Apple will still be selling devices at all in 5 years, or if they'll only rent them out for €25/$25/£25 per month. Ultimately that'll probably be the only way to get the control they want.

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#44

Post by ddorian43 »

minikites wrote: post #33
ddorian43 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do watch these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXWBvB4U-cA

You sound like one of those white guys that say "Why can't I say the n-word if I feel like it!!"

Saying n-word is exactly the same as saying nigger. F that (see). Why can black people say the nigger word ? Or do you censor them too ?

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#45

Post by taspeotis »

interpol_p wrote: post #36
jacquesm wrote: post #4

It's totally dumb that a functioning phone is bricked by an update because of repairs done in the past. Imagine the same thing happening to your car. "Sorry sir, the software update done to your car has now disabled the vehicle because in the past someone not related to x (insert name of car company here) has repaired it, your car is now junk (you can't even resell it) and you'll have to buy a new one". It's just pet…

Seems more like short sightedness than "petty revenge." The new home button hardware can't be securely validated, and a future OS update fails on the unexpected condition of invalid Touch ID hardware. I can imagine that this wasn't a prioritised testing scenario, likely not even considered by Apple when developing iOS. It's a lousy way to fail — the phone should just disable Touch ID and Apple Pay, and anything that…

The scenario they're protecting against appears (to me) to be a bad actor changing the hardware. If the Touch ID sensor is bad, and you propose falling back to a PIN, who's to say the digitizer isn't compromised too and is recording touches?

Sounds a bit like a downgrade attack if they didn't fail fast and hard at the earliest opportunity.

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#46

Post by watmough »

skc wrote: post #13

Wouldn't a better idea be to simply display an error message to the effect of "your phone has undergone untrusted changes, please bring to your nearest Apple store" rather than bricking the whole thing?

This, or simply allow it to be completely reset a la Android or Chrome.

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#47

Post by an_d_rew »

You DO have the right to repair your iPhone; it just has to be done by an official Apple repair centre.

I completely understand the downsides of Apple's particular approach here, and totally get why people want the right to use 3rd party repair services. I've used them myself in the past to save (a lot of) money.

But considering just how much of my life, financial and otherwise, is on my phone, I'm actually very glad that Apple has erred on the side of obsessive security!

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#48

Post by opcoda »

minikites wrote: post #33
ddorian43 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do watch these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXWBvB4U-cA

You sound like one of those white guys that say "Why can't I say the n-word if I feel like it!!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#49

Post by minikites »

6d6b73 wrote: post #32
minikites wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it what it actually is: short sighted, greedy, foolish, etc. Don't use a word that puts down people with disabilities.

Does fire retardant put down people with disabilities? He used a normal word in a right context. He did not write "retards".

But that's not the same definition as the word he used. Fire/flame retardant basically means "fire delayer" Run that through the original sentence and it becomes nonsensical: "It's totally 'delayed' that a functioning phone is bricked by an update".

Re: iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs

#50

Post by pjc50 »

The stated rationale is that it's reasonable for a security-critical device to self-destruct if it thinks it may have been tampered with. Unfortunately this is a phone which costs a lot of money and has much of the user's life stored on it. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple sued over this; I don't know what the interaction of the Sale of Goods Act and remote-bricking is.

I was thinking along similar lines recently when someone sent me an email to an old PGP key - I was able to dig up the key, but had long since forgotten the password. Do you want your computer security system to fail-open (leaking your stuff and potentially exposing you to fraud) or fail-closed (losing data which may be irreplaceable and of emotional significance)?. It's not obvious. But if you store your photos on your phone, you should probably back them up to the cloud - and to a different system that is not under the same account, either locally or another cloud. User-friendly crypto may be possible, but user-friendly key management is a total nightmare.

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