While they're getting a fix ready, might be smart to just disable FaceTime if you don't rely on it.
https://www.imore.com/how-to-turn-on-off-restrict-facetime-i...
FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
21–30 of 458 posts
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#22That's a pretty huge flaw. Millions if not billions of people can suddenly remotely spy on almost any other ios or mac anywhere in the world, just by knowing their email address or phone number? Perhaps Apple should simply pull the plug on the facetime servers for now.
That's a pretty huge flaw. Millions if not...
Is it just me, or is such a phrase applicable to Apple far too many times in the past several years? I think their engineering is losing quality or is falling behind on what they have to cover.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#23I'm always curious how a bug like this ships. I mean QA & Testing should catch it, sure. But even before then. Some engineer wrote code for FaceTime that has it open the microphone before the call is accepted. And transmit the audio over the network before the call is accepted. Who did that? And why? I'm not suggesting malice but I do wonder at the lack of defensive programming.
There is a general lack of unit testing culture at Apple. This became all too apparent after Goto Fail (https://martinfowler.com/articles/testing-culture.html) and remains an unacceptable risk for using iOS products in my view. Incidents such as https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/28/macos-high-sierra-bug-a... make me skeptical about using macOS, too.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#24Security and privacy are two big parts of the marketing for the iPhone. I'm curious how they can mitigate the reputational damage. Edit: It gets worse: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18201383/apple-facetime-b... If the recipient rejects the call by pressing the power button, it starts sending video.
Why would this be any more reputationally damaging than the numerous other bugs with iPhone behavior? It’s not like iPhones have a reputation for not having bugs; it seems like every version has a passcode bypass or a DoS-via-iMessage. By some standards, this is worse (remotely triggerable, leaks audio/video), but in other cases it’s not as bad: the attacker’s Apple ID ends up in the call logs of the affected person.…
Surely you understand that different bugs create vastly different problems?
Audio and video leaking without knowledge from such a personal device that people take with them everywhere is about as bad as it gets in terms of privacy breach.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#25I'm always curious how a bug like this ships. I mean QA & Testing should catch it, sure. But even before then. Some engineer wrote code for FaceTime that has it open the microphone before the call is accepted. And transmit the audio over the network before the call is accepted. Who did that? And why? I'm not suggesting malice but I do wonder at the lack of defensive programming.
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Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#26I'm always curious how a bug like this ships. I mean QA & Testing should catch it, sure. But even before then. Some engineer wrote code for FaceTime that has it open the microphone before the call is accepted. And transmit the audio over the network before the call is accepted. Who did that? And why? I'm not suggesting malice but I do wonder at the lack of defensive programming.
Apple's application programming has fallen off a cliff in the last 4 years. I blame Swift. There's nothing wrong with the language itself, but its outward similarities to.... other dynamic languages I feel has led to a rot in the core of what was once a rock solid culture of embedded C/C++/Objective-C programmers building robust, well architected applications. The average Apple app today is just as buggy and disjointed as anything else on the App Store, and that never used to be the case.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#27I'm always curious how a bug like this ships. I mean QA & Testing should catch it, sure. But even before then. Some engineer wrote code for FaceTime that has it open the microphone before the call is accepted. And transmit the audio over the network before the call is accepted. Who did that? And why? I'm not suggesting malice but I do wonder at the lack of defensive programming.
Apple's application programming has fallen off a cliff in the last 4 years. I blame Swift. There's nothing wrong with the language itself, but its outward similarities to.... other dynamic languages I feel has led to a rot in the core of what was once a rock solid culture of embedded C/C++/Objective-C programmers building robust, well architected applications. The average Apple app today is just as buggy and disjoint…
You need to integrate the famous iTunes into this thesis.
(people have complained about it approximately since it was released)
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would this be any more reputationally damaging than the numerous other bugs with iPhone behavior? It’s not like iPhones have a reputation for not having bugs; it seems like every version has a passcode bypass or a DoS-via-iMessage. By some standards, this is worse (remotely triggerable, leaks audio/video), but in other cases it’s not as bad: the attacker’s Apple ID ends up in the call logs of the affected person.…
Surely you understand that different bugs create vastly different problems? Audio and video leaking without knowledge from such a personal device that people take with them everywhere is about as bad as it gets in terms of privacy breach.
It’s also the kind of bug and impact that is very easy for the layperson to understand, even without sensationalist write ups.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#29Not for long. Will be patched in hours, I bet.
This would actually be a fun interview question - how to emergency patch 1B+ globally distributed mobile devices. I would say at least several days for the obvious QA which needs to be done.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's application programming has fallen off a cliff in the last 4 years. I blame Swift. There's nothing wrong with the language itself, but its outward similarities to.... other dynamic languages I feel has led to a rot in the core of what was once a rock solid culture of embedded C/C++/Objective-C programmers building robust, well architected applications. The average Apple app today is just as buggy and disjoint…
You need to integrate the famous iTunes into this thesis. (people have complained about it approximately since it was released)
>You need to integrate the famous iTunes into this thesis.
Desktop iTunes is a dumpster fire, but their iOS software is what I was specifically referring to.