How does Apple privately find offline devices?
blog.cryptographyengineering.com
How does Apple privately find offline devices?
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Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#2>can use a single [private] key regardless of which randomized version of her public key was used to encrypt.
I have not seen this before. Trying to wrap my brain around how this works. In terms of ECC I thought public and private were a single pair. Can anyone explain what is going on with public key randomization?
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#3The post is speculation; perhaps s/does/might/ or s/does/could/ in the title.
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#4Can we turn this off? please?
I would like 100% passive bluetooth. (and wifi, and nfc)
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#5>can use a single [private] key regardless of which randomized version of her public key was used to encrypt. I have not seen this before. Trying to wrap my brain around how this works. In terms of ECC I thought public and private were a single pair. Can anyone explain what is going on with public key randomization?
Warning: this is baseless speculation from someone with only a semester of cryptography experience.
If you asked me to implement "randomized public keys" I would generate a master key pair (MPUB and MPRIV). Then, I would combine MPRIV and a random value N in a one-way function to make a new key K. I would use K as effectively a "random public key" and use it as if it was MPUB (the one-way function would have to output a K that is in the same format / usable like MPUB). I would distribute N along with K, as N is useless without MPRIV.
I have no idea if that is how they did it but that's what comes to mind.
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#6The problem I see with this is that your phone always has to be broadcasting the BLE beacon, regardless of if it is lost or not. Otherwise it could randomly end up lost in a place with poor/no service... and would never be found
For phones, how often is this really an issue? Sure, this is useful for the Tile type "dumb" devices... but if my phone has no cell or data service... it's probably because the battery is dead.
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#7The post is speculation; perhaps s/does/might/ or s/does/could/ in the title.
Not so much; most of the article restates in simpler terms what Apple has outlined as reported in Wired[0].
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet...
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#8The problem I see with this is that your phone always has to be broadcasting the BLE beacon, regardless of if it is lost or not. Otherwise it could randomly end up lost in a place with poor/no service... and would never be found For phones, how often is this really an issue? Sure, this is useful for the Tile type "dumb" devices... but if my phone has no cell or data service... it's probably because the battery is dea…
Some people have hypothesized that this isn't necessarily for finding phones. This might be about using phones (and iPads, Apple Watches, MacBooks, etc.) to create a network like the one used by the Tile product for finding wallets, keys, etc. This could be a product Apple unveils in September.
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#9Can we turn this off? please? I would like 100% passive bluetooth. (and wifi, and nfc)
How is that going to work? All communication that you initiate must be active. The only passive option would be broadcasts like TV or radio stations, but that’s not particularly useful if you want to view a specific website.
Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?
#10Okay, so this would make it insanely easy to stalk any iPhone user.
1. Get BLE tracking tags, and register them with Find My.
2. Covertly attach the BLE tracking tags to things your target owns (backpacks, cars, bikes, etc).
3. You constantly get updates on your tags locations via their iPhone and other iOS devices near the BLE tag(s). This gives you their approximate location and movement history, facilitated primarily through their own iPhone and data plan.