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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

#411

Post by grogenaut »

saagarjha wrote: post #286
grogenaut wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So every bugfix is a rebuild from current, not from "released"? This seems like not a real process.

I'm not sure if they have a special process for emergency bug fixes, but for internal testing a new build is done about daily from source, yes. One of these ends up being polished a bit and sent out to users.

So my confusion is generally it's best practices to keep branches off of these releases and then just apply fixes to that. Even better is if you can keep the meta build around or use a distributed build system so that you can do incremental builds for patches to that release getting the time way down, unless of course you're changing core libraries and have to recompile or re-link everything. It would seem a risk to me security wise that there wasn't a fast way to get patches out to prod per app or fo the os that don't require full blown rebuilds.

I guess I may also not be accounting for the QA process.

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

#412

Post by tcgv »

neya wrote: post #336
npunt wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock manipulation perhaps? Happens a lot with Tesla apparently, short sellers will pump up any negative story and try to get it into press. This person was making several attempts to get in contact with press after all, and a story about a teenager finding a big privacy bug in a company that publicly touts its privacy chops has ‘news at 11’ written all over it. Personally I think a bug report story is not a particul…

Is it still called stock manipulation if the bug is critical and for real and the company deserves to lose shareholder value simply for the critical nature of the bug? Imagine how many people are vulnerable out there - I'm already starting to read some complaints on the internet that some people were unknowingly sharing a video of them taking a shower, etc.

If you're are in possesion of information with the potential to impact the stock price when released and you use it in your own favor to try to make a profit, then I believe it can be characterized as an attempt of stock manipulation.

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

#413

Post by trumped »

brownbat wrote: post #345
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…

They were trying to reduce a latency and accidentally made it negative.

latency of local hardware is much lower then cellphone/internet latency... so even if you bring local hardware latency to 0, you still have major network lag... I know you are kidding but this is ridiculous

They supposedly have these chips that make your phone much more secure and they can't get stupid stuff like this right? LOL ... GO APPLE. My trust level was already close to zero before this...

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

#414

Post by morganvachon »

omeid2 wrote: post #218
morganvachon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I feel like a relic using Slackware with lilo and SysV init, then I read about exploits like that and I smile.

I am afraid your system is _probably_ just bug ridden as any other, it is simply not popular enough to for people to find bugs.

It's actually the opposite situation. Slackware's policy is to stick to the original software as distributed by the author with only minimal patching where necessary, so if a particular program (say, KDE) has a big support community, Slackware benefits from all those eyes on the code. This leads to a very mature and stable system at the expense of running older versions of software (though there's always the -current branch for those wishing to live on the edge).

Beyond this, the small but dedicated Slackware team is working daily to find and patch bugs when they do appear. You can look at the changelogs for examples of that workflow[1].

There's no such thing as a software project without bugs, but Slackware is consistently one of the most stable and robust OSes out there.

[1] http://www.slackware.com/changelog/

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

#415

Post by update »

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.

> I mean QA & Testing should catch it, sure.

I believe they have been working on FaceTime Group for 5+ years now.

In 2015, Modern Family had an episode where the entire plot focused around the family using FaceTime on their iPhones --- but they had the Group feature[1]! I remember being blown away when I saw that, figured it'd be coming in the next iOS update. It didn't. 4 years later, they finally released it..then recalled it immediately

[1] https://www.mlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/02/tech_r...

edit: managed to find a short clip from said Modern Family episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy3jUOBxQuI

Though in the full episode you see a lot more of the Group feature

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

#416

Post by chx »

Oof. I am reasonably sure very very soon there will be a number of very polite but very pointed questions on Apple's desk from concerned lawmakers, data protection authorities and such not only from the USA but the European Union as well about how this happened and what are they doing to make sure this doesn't happen again. I can very well see the European Data Protection Supervisor fining them to some very interesting amount as well.

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

#417

Post by tammer »

I encountered a bug a while back — when I would connect to a dial-out call to get onto my company’s conference service from its app, while using a pair of cheap Bluetooth headphones (I’ve upgraded since then!) the mute button didn’t work.

As in, the mute button would be clearly activated, but my audio still carried through to the call. As in, I discovered this in quite an embarrassing way.

I filed a radar but never got a real response about it. Really there appears to be a strong need at Apple to ensure QA is checking for confirmations of user interaction. As I haven’t experienced anything like this since I’m still with them but these types of problems are the very thing that would lead me to shake my deep investment in the Apple ecosystem.

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

#418

Post by hackmiester »

oil25 wrote: post #394
hackmiester wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, that's a plain and simple lie, since you can't download apps from the App Store without an Apple account, nor do I believe you can install software updates.

I haven't tried in a while, but last I checked, updates worked fine.

It's not necessary to download apps from the App Store to use an iPhone.

I'm not sure what was the need for you to call me a liar. If anything I've said is inaccurate, I guess it has changed in the last few months, and I would love to know that.

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

#419

Post by spurcell93 »

oil25 wrote: post #394
hackmiester wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, that's a plain and simple lie, since you can't download apps from the App Store without an Apple account, nor do I believe you can install software updates.

Don't accuse people of lying when they are clearly not lying. You may dispute the details, but the OP did not lie.

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

#420

Post by danra »

Apple’s bug handling is broken.

Anyone who has filed a few rdars knows it is thankless work. The amount of work you have to invest for anyone to even look at your bug is high. In the instance of this particular bug, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least part of the reason it took a week and a half to handle since it was reported was that the initial reply to the reporter was “please send us the exact steps to reproduce” and then nothing was done until the bug reporter replied back. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there were even a few iterations of this, since I personally experienced it.

Then, your bug gets looked at. But you don’t know anything about its status. Until anything from a few days to a few months later, it gets closed as a duplicate. Of course there is no way to know in advance that the bug was already opened, and that you could save an hour of work time instead of making a minimal reproducible version of your app which reproduces the bug.

At least, that’s been my unfortunate experience.

/rant

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