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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

#451

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.

Our company's phone system, or our provider, had a problem with outgoing calls once: you couldn't call users of a certain mobile provider, but only if they were currently using GSM. Anything newer would make it work. The symptom was that even when the cell user picked up, you'd still here the sound like their phone is still ringing. That alone was already mindboggling to me, but the crazy part was that with certain phone models (at our company), the cell user would be able to hear you while you still thought their phone was ringing.

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt he has his public email hooked up to his iPhone's iMessage/FaceTime, anyways.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has their own internal iCloud network. Just like Google has their Apps for Business, Apple could have one but just inwards-facing and not hosting any other business. This means even if you have his internal FaceTime/iMessage ID, you wouldn't be able to contact him because his account and yours exist in 2 realms. Then again I guess he'd need an external-facing one for public VVIP to Fa…

Apple has iCloud@Work, but I don't think it supports iMessage and FaceTime.

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for this one, no.

Why would you need to patch the binary? If you're pushing out an update to fix the issue, the update may as well push out a rebuilt app than a binary diff.

I had been involved in a really hairy service interruption that involved hardcoded urls into an sdk (http://a.com/b.js), and a.com was remapped to a brand new web service / target which no longer had the file. As if it's not enough, the server returned 301 permanent redirect with 60 day ttl to http://c.com. Our traffic dropped 40% because of that mistake (not 100 because in previous couple releases i have changed that url to be something that's widely used and had no risk of getting messed up, but old clients still had the urls embedded).

As if that is not enough, the IOS library for some reason had implemented "hand rolled "caching with a lot of hardcoding.

To fix the issue... i made c.com homepage also serve b.js at the bottom.

There is no way in hell this would be committed and tested within qa timelines of either a.com set up or c.com setup.

It's rather complex to fully explain without giving more context on what it is but when traffic drops 40% and you are generating 5M$/day.... You do whatever to bring it back.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to patch the binary? If you're pushing out an update to fix the issue, the update may as well push out a rebuilt app than a binary diff.

I had been involved in a really hairy service interruption that involved hardcoded urls into an sdk ( http://a.com/b.js ), and a.com was remapped to a brand new web service / target which no longer had the file. As if it's not enough, the server returned 301 permanent redirect with 60 day ttl to http://c.com . Our traffic dropped 40% because of that mistake (not 100 because in previous couple releases i have changed…

[deleted]

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to patch the binary? If you're pushing out an update to fix the issue, the update may as well push out a rebuilt app than a binary diff.

I had been involved in a really hairy service interruption that involved hardcoded urls into an sdk ( http://a.com/b.js ), and a.com was remapped to a brand new web service / target which no longer had the file. As if it's not enough, the server returned 301 permanent redirect with 60 day ttl to http://c.com . Our traffic dropped 40% because of that mistake (not 100 because in previous couple releases i have changed…

I might have misunderstood your previous comment. You were saying that for this specific incident with Apple they wouldn't need to do binary patching, right?

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

#456
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter what the page says. You can buy an iPhone and just press "Skip" during set up. Easy.

You can't install apps though, which for many people may as well be "you can't use the phone"

You can make and receive calls, you can use the browser and web apps to do everything you need to do online.

So it's not correct to say "you can't use an iPhone without an Apple ID" in any sense. People should be SPECIFIC.

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had been involved in a really hairy service interruption that involved hardcoded urls into an sdk ( http://a.com/b.js ), and a.com was remapped to a brand new web service / target which no longer had the file. As if it's not enough, the server returned 301 permanent redirect with 60 day ttl to http://c.com . Our traffic dropped 40% because of that mistake (not 100 because in previous couple releases i have changed…

I might have misunderstood your previous comment. You were saying that for this specific incident with Apple they wouldn't need to do binary patching, right?

Yes, they probably wouldnt.

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

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

right... the network creates the latency, not the time it takes to turn on a microphone (which is instant when compared to network latency)
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