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FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

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Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#101

Post by hopler »

wmf wrote: post #15
NelsonMinar wrote: post #13

I'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.

This is a form of speculation which increases performance in the common case where the call is accepted.

Similar to how Nextels cellular "push to talk" fake walkie talkies worked.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#102

Post by aphextron »

saagarjha wrote: post #70
aphextron wrote: post #26

Earlier 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…

Most of iOS is still written using Objective-C, including FaceTime. Swift has nothing to do with this.

>Most of iOS is still written using Objective-C, including FaceTime. Swift has nothing to do with this.

Most of iOS is still great. The problem is all the cruft that has developed since around 7.0. It just seems like an endless march of features at all expense.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#103

Post by saagarjha »

leephillips wrote: post #86
Jonnax wrote: post #12

Security 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.

Apple has shipped versions of its Mail program that delete email without warning¹ and versions of the Finder or OS X that delete² files. And much more. Yet their reputation is intact: the masses still believe that they put out quality software. They are truly the Teflon corporation. ¹ http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12758081&... ² http://tomkarpik.com/articles/massive-data-loss-bug-in-leopa...

Neither of your links seem to work, and the second one in particular seemed to have been dead for what seems like half a decade. Have you just kept these links around to whip out in support of this argument, without checking once whether they actually go somewhere?

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#104

Post by rgovostes »

Fun story: I tested this bug, initiating a call from my phone and then joining it on my Mac. After I had ended the call, the Mac's camera LED stayed on, even though the FaceTime app was not showing a video preview (in fact it had no windows open). Was it transmitting? Who knows! State management seems to be a mess all over the place.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#105

Post by omaranto »

argsv wrote: post #100
joeblau wrote: post #48

I just called my friend who was already on a call talking to his brother. He could hear me and his brother but his brother and I couldn't hear each other. I was also able to call him, have him hang up and then see his video and hear his audio. He couldn't hear me, but I could hear and see everything. I'm turning my phone off tonight!

is it not enough to disable FaceTime for the time being?

It probably is, but when you are freaked out you want certainty.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#106

Post by hopler »

pbh101 wrote: post #64
aphextron wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So… your theory is that if people understood pointers this wouldn’t have happened? Yes. But it has nothing to do with pointers specifically, just the mindset and training of the average developer who has had experience with them, vs. the average developer who has not. There's an entire generation of developers now graduating from CS programs, hiring into Apple, and getting dumped on these application teams with zero…

One of the headlining features of the latest iOS release was performance.

That's computing's tick tock release pattern in general. Tick new features, tock optimizes performance.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#107

Post by crgt »

paultopia wrote: post #97
gpm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless Apple decides they face significant legal exposure over the bug somehow I don't see them doing that. It would attract so much more attention that it would almost certainly not be worth it economically. I wonder if they (executives? engineers? the company itself?) could be charged with aiding and abetting wiretapping or something now that they know it's happening and are letting their servers keep doing it.

Anyone got Tim Cook's number? If you do, bet you can get some, uh, exposure for this problem real quick.

Anyone try FaceTiming his email? Could be linked to iCloud and FaceTime-able..

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#108

Post by saagarjha »

aphextron wrote: post #102
saagarjha wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of iOS is still written using Objective-C, including FaceTime. Swift has nothing to do with this.

>Most of iOS is still written using Objective-C, including FaceTime. Swift has nothing to do with this. Most of iOS is still great. The problem is all the cruft that has developed since around 7.0. It just seems like an endless march of features at all expense.

Swift came out along iOS 8, just FYI. Is there some other cruft you're talking about?

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#109

Post by kimburgess »

It may be entirely unrelated, however this is the exact sort of behaviour you would expect to see associated with providing compatibility with Australia's newly introduced AABill, or to implement GCHQ's ghost participant proposal (https://www.lawfareblog.com/principles-more-informed-excepti...).

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#110

Post by gene91 »

wmf wrote: post #15
NelsonMinar wrote: post #13

I'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.

This is a form of speculation which increases performance in the common case where the call is accepted.

This sound horrifying. If I use a hacked/modified FaceTime client, does this mean I'll be able to hear and see the other end before they pick up, even after the fix?
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