There was a recent article which correctly pointed out the Samsung phone owners cannot uninstall Facebook from their phones. It is best to assume that you're always being listened to, and watched. User settings can always be overridden, buried in code you'll never see.
FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
311–320 of 458 posts
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#312Premature optimization, perhaps. Don’t optimize by sending audio too early (as others have suggested) and why should I be able to add my own number to the conversation if I that number is the call’s initiator? Makes no sense.
>why should I be able to add my own number to the conversation
You might want to add several devices with the same facetime handle to the same call.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
iPhones already have a "mute" slider switch. When I first looked into iPhones (after years of Androids), my instant reaction upon seeing the slider switch was "Ah! FINALLY! I can feel at peace in the knowledge that software vulnerabilities are powerless to hack my camera or microphone!" Of course, stupidly, the slider doesn't "mute" my camera or microphone, but only my speaker. For Apple to modify this slider so that…
Crazy but true: there are people who take pictures while their phone is in silent mode.
Even crazier and also true: There are people who actually use their phone to make phone calls (Yes, kids, that still happens) while their phone is in silent mode.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#314I'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.
> I'm not suggesting malice but I do wonder at the lack of defensive programming.
I've never worked at Apple but neither have I in 10 years seen people truly appreciate any attempts I did in defensive programming. On the contrary, usually I hear - sometimes loud - complaints about that. Usually from fellow engineers when they see it but on occasions also from non technical people.
It's a joke that everybody is so sad about bad application security but at the same time virtually nobody cares about it at all when involved in an actual development project.
Classical case of NIMBY. FWIW Apple's security is far over average compared to other companies. But I guess they cannot isolate themselves 100%.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#315I'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.
It reminds me of this MacOS bug from last year, where simply hitting the login box over and over with no password would eventually bypass the security entirely: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/28/root_access_bypass_... And this other MacOS bug, also from last year, where the password hint would contain the plain text encryption password: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/05/apple_patches_passw... All within…
These are the sort of "bugs" that have barely enough plausible deniability as backdoors to make people believe they were "random" or "human error."
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#316I'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.
My guess is that it’s an unfortunate combination of several problems: - audio and video capture has to start going before call is actually established at signaling level, in order to minimize call establishment delay. Audio maybe going through Bluetooth, for example, and waking up Handsfree mode of BT may take 1-2 sec - most of the group calling functionality was developed by a separate team, and group calling signal…
> audio and video capture has to start going before call is actually established at signaling level, in order to minimize call establishment delay. Audio maybe going through Bluetooth, for example, and waking up Handsfree mode of BT may take 1-2 sec
As a user, while I can accept capture starting before I answer, I cannot accept sending. I understand how it helps the speed of establishing calls.
But it means the only thing needed to spy on me from that is a software change ON THE OTHER SIDE. No way to know from my side if I'm good or not.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#317Apple has disabled group FaceTime on their end. https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
Haven't seen this page before (although admittedly I only have a mac, I don't use any of Apple's other services/devices) but I like how it feels... "Apple".
First of all they convert the time automatically as someone already posted, which is a very welcome surprise.
The second (and most surprising for me) thing was that they only have 2 statuses: "Available" and "Issue". And while most status pages have trained us to expect that the antithetical of green is red that it immediately catches your eye, in this case it is a simple yellow diamond which is much less alarming. I sense the PR department had its saying in how to present service availability issues.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#318Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#319I must admit that when reading yet another privacy-invasion-headline I saw "Facebook", not FaceTime/Apple. Not sure whether it's more indicative of unjustified prejudice or actual precedent.
Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up
#320Apple has disabled group FaceTime on their end. https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
Oh damn, they can do it just like that? I thought FaceTime was a P2P thing... but it appears group FT requires Apple's servers?
P2P calls and video calls are patented. I don’t think anyone offers them anymore since the Virnetx cases.