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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

#431

Post by foobaw »

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.

Agreed - looks like something very simple to add as a test-case. If not manual, an automated QA process could've easily caught this if it was even remotely robust enough.

The steps to reproduce is trivial so I'm shocked.

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

#432

Post by waz0wski »

askafriend wrote: post #133
gene91 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Facetime calls are end to end encrypted so I doubt a modified client would work.

Modified clients are definitely possible - review the recent Project Zero research into webRTC vulnerabilities, which included a look at FaceTime and discovered several exploitable bugs

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/12/adventures-in...

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

#433

Post by ben174 »

smmnyc wrote: post #183

Apple has disabled group FaceTime on their end. https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

I wonder how they're going to re-enable it. Can they disable group FaceTime only for people who aren't on the latest iOS version once it's patched?

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

#434

Post by leephillips »

saagarjha wrote: post #103
leephillips wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Thank you for informing me of the dead links, for which I apologize. Apparently Apple is also a poor net citizen, allowing its URLs to rot.

Yes, I keep notes about things, some of which contain links. Obviously, these links used to work.

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

#435

Post by buzzert »

npunt wrote: post #268
docbrown wrote: post #259

Rumor mill: FaceTime bug was submitted to Apple on 20 January 2019 by a concerned mother after .. her 14-year-old son discovered it. >My teen found a major security flaw in Apple’s new iOS. He can listen in to your iPhone/iPad without your approval. I have video. Submitted bug report to @AppleSupport...waiting to hear back to provide details. Scary stuff! #apple #bugreport @foxnews [0] https://twitter.com/mgt7500/sta…

Interesting twitter account. First tweet 1/1/19, few followers, mostly politics, then a major bug report (not only in discovery but in knowing how to go through the reporting process). Not saying it’s fake at all - it looks 100% legitimate - but it adds some extra bit of weirdness to this story. Quite the providence, and a really bad bug. (edited for clarity)

At the bottom of the screenshot attached to this post you can see her extortion attempt: https://twitter.com/mgt7500/status/1090079031666438144?s=21

  I am willing to give details and provide a home video 
  that I to ok to show you the flaw, but would like to 
  discuss this with someone prior to doing so...
  It is unclear whether Apple provides a reward program
  for non-... [cut off]
I'm not surprised Apple didn't respond to this message.

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

#436

Post by int_19h »

notfed wrote: post #137
int_19h wrote: post #124

This sort of thing is why I'd prefer devices to come with hardware killswitches for mic, video, and various radio modules.

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…

Is it a genuine hardware killswitch, though? Or just a hardware button with actual implementation of mute done in software?

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

#437

Post by samstave »

A fun though experiment for a bug like this would have been to test lists of emails against validating the ability to FaceTime call with the email and determine if it was used as the iCloud email address...

Had this bug gone unknown longer - then you'd have a list of all the endpoints you could spy on.

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

#438

Post by hi41 »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #429
jasallen wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"negative latency". That's a Jobs worthy dodge right there.

It's weird seeing my username come up in a comment.

Does it mean I got to read your msg before you clicked the post button! :-)

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

#439

Post by nucleardog »

trumped wrote: post #413
brownbat wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Latency between answering the call and being able to actually talk to the person on the other end.

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

#440

Post by yalok »

zimpenfish wrote: post #349
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…

> leads to either remote side think that the call was answered Maybe that's triggered by adding your own number? Since you're clearly on the call already, your own number is obviously going to answer immediately and that kicks the whole call into "active" (since you presumably want a call to become active when more than one person has answered) without considering that you've actually got A+A+B instead of A+B+C.

maybe - it's hard to tell, and I did bring up that other option as well. It's just that when a 1-1 call upgrades to a multiparty call, there should a be a lot of new stuff going on at signaling level to convert that 1-1 call to multiparty - and a chance is that it's a combination that leads to this bug - a call gets upgraded to a multiparty AND a number being added is already part of the call...
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