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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

#321

Post by C14L »

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.

If the implementation is complicated enough, the code that opens the mic and the code that accepts the call are so far away from each other that its impossible to see. That's why keeping things simple is the greatest art in programming.

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

#322

Post by Haga »

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.

When in doubt collect all the data.

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

#323

Post by akvadrako »

nolok wrote: post #316
yalok wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's what he meant. It can be sending empty audio, but the whole path needs to be up and running.

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

#325

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by neuronic »

hackmiester wrote: post #278
oil25 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to root an iPhone or use one without signing in with an Apple account (that's tied to a credit card, etc)? If not, then I believe the devices are still very much part of a mass-scale corporate surveillance network.

Yes, you can use an iPhone without signing into any account.

It's incredible to me that people to this day are trying to make Apple look as bad as Google when all it takes is a look at the business models...

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

#328

Post by laumars »

nurettin wrote: post #257
laumars wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I wouldn’t but that in the same class if bugs as those that preceded it because if the attacker he removed the HDD he will have access to your contents anyway (unless the HDD is encrypted) and it’s not a quick and convenient process either (unlike tapping backspace multiple times). That said, I also don’t agree that this bug should never get fixed either.

This is a very naive estimation of what might happen when someone has access to all your running software. Since it is linux, it loads executables into memory and is able to run them even when they are deleted along with runtime dependencies. Anything that caches anything to anywhere other than disk will be accessible. Your memcache, your redis, some databases, keychains, your non-userdata browser sessions.

I'm aware of that but it's a moot point because you'd be popping the storage device back in anyway. Which is why I didn't address that in my previous comment.

In any case, half the examples you've provided there are server specific and you really shouldn't be allowing untrusted physical access to your servers (nor running Xorg to be honest).

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

#329

Post by joeblau »

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?

You may not even have to do that. It looks like Apple disabled Group FaceTime server side[1].

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025329

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

#330

Post by [deleted] »

akerl_ wrote: post #42
giancarlostoro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would this be any more reputationally damaging than the numerous other bugs with iPhone behavior? Oh I don't know, someone denied the call because they're possibly in the shower, or other inappropriate moments. Oh look now they're naked on a video call... Yikes!

I feel like you're answering a different question that I asked. I don't think the bug is low-severity. I'm asking: Is there any historical evidence that high-severity bugs in iPhones (or really any mobile phone) are reputationally damaging, sufficiently that Apple would worry about the impact of this bug? I'm not aware of any instance in the past where a high-sev iPhone bug had noticable long-term impact. This is sim…

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