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How does Apple privately find offline devices?

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#101

Post by zed88 »

Well...a bit off topic but kind of relevant.

My car got broken into and my iPad nicked. I was able to locate that, however, the cops here in NZ were really unhelpful.

They said the GPS location wouldn't be sufficient for a search warrant as they have had many cases of false positives.

I said I would give the ssid and ip address of their wifi network, even then they wouldn't agree for a raid.

It was only when the thief (who was a minor) took the pic of his family member, which I then furnished to the police (via iCloud), they could do something.

Wondering what good is technology, if the law takes a while to catchup, well at least here in NZ.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#102

Post by bigiain »

abakker wrote: post #91
Phlarp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they do and have internally assessed that it would be too creepy to provide to users, but are happily using it to better target advertising.

Do you get toilet paper ads when browsing in the restroom?

My new startup uses SDKs embedded into popular apps that make ultrasonic clicks and use sonar-like reflections to estimate the length of toilet paper remaining on the roll (using AI, machine learning, and blockchain, obviously). /s

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#103

Post by dylan604 »

zed88 wrote: post #101

Well...a bit off topic but kind of relevant. My car got broken into and my iPad nicked. I was able to locate that, however, the cops here in NZ were really unhelpful. They said the GPS location wouldn't be sufficient for a search warrant as they have had many cases of false positives. I said I would give the ssid and ip address of their wifi network, even then they wouldn't agree for a raid. It was only when the thie…

It's not just NZ. Police in the US are no better. In the Dallas PD, the detective assigned to the case when our house was burgled would not respond to emails sent to him providing evidence. After reaching out through other avenues to reach the detective, he flat out responded with being too busy to read emails. The case went uncleared. However, a few weeks later, there was a random call saying they found an iPad reported as lost/stolen and would be willing to return it for a small finder's fee. Again, the police refused to assist during the meet up.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#104

Post by erikpukinskis »

zed88 wrote: post #101

Well...a bit off topic but kind of relevant. My car got broken into and my iPad nicked. I was able to locate that, however, the cops here in NZ were really unhelpful. They said the GPS location wouldn't be sufficient for a search warrant as they have had many cases of false positives. I said I would give the ssid and ip address of their wifi network, even then they wouldn't agree for a raid. It was only when the thie…

Legally could you go get it, and in the resulting skirmish perhaps attract the attention of the police?

Is trespassing to retrieve stolen property still trespassing?

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#105

Post by zed88 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #104
zed88 wrote: post #101

Well...a bit off topic but kind of relevant. My car got broken into and my iPad nicked. I was able to locate that, however, the cops here in NZ were really unhelpful. They said the GPS location wouldn't be sufficient for a search warrant as they have had many cases of false positives. I said I would give the ssid and ip address of their wifi network, even then they wouldn't agree for a raid. It was only when the thie…

Legally could you go get it, and in the resulting skirmish perhaps attract the attention of the police? Is trespassing to retrieve stolen property still trespassing?

I am not sure about the local bylaws around trespassing, but the lady on the police helpline categorically asked me to not do it.

It was being pinged in a gang prone area, I wouldn't have done it anyway.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#106

Post by rampant_ai »

president wrote: post #92
kccqzy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thieves already know that stolen iPhones are usually not operable. Even with the old Find My iPhone, even after the device has been wiped, only the original owner can activate it again. So these stolen phones are usually broken down, with parts sold separately.

They are getting smarter. A family member had their phone stolen and Find My iPhone reported that the phone was off for months and so she gave up searching. One day, she got a text on her new phone saying "Find my iPhone has found your phone, click here to login to Find my iPhone". It turned out to be a phishing page for her AppleID credentials. She fell for it and I'm assuming the thieves were able to finally get in…

> To this day I have no idea how they were able to get her phone number

Guessing here but maybe using "emergency call" and another phone to get the caller ID?

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#108

Post by diminoten »

HALtheWise wrote: post #89
Phlarp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they do and have internally assessed that it would be too creepy to provide to users, but are happily using it to better target advertising.

Or they have decided that it's too creepy to use at all, so they don't use it for targeted advertising. Seriously, why does everyone assume that companies are evilly cackling in volcano lairs? They know that violating user trust is really expensive and a bad idea. By the way, I'm pretty sure I've seen that Google's advertising targeting is only allowed to use "neighborhood level" location, which is designed to be coa…

Fiduciary duty to shareholders makes good people do bad things...

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#109

Post by diminoten »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #104
zed88 wrote: post #101

Well...a bit off topic but kind of relevant. My car got broken into and my iPad nicked. I was able to locate that, however, the cops here in NZ were really unhelpful. They said the GPS location wouldn't be sufficient for a search warrant as they have had many cases of false positives. I said I would give the ssid and ip address of their wifi network, even then they wouldn't agree for a raid. It was only when the thie…

Legally could you go get it, and in the resulting skirmish perhaps attract the attention of the police? Is trespassing to retrieve stolen property still trespassing?

Could you hire a asset recovery agent to actually do the "retrieving" for you?

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#110

Post by xt00 »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #6

The 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…

Apple is highly averse to having your phone send out any BLE beacon all the time. Likely what they will do is the following:

1) The iPhone will be considered the "master" (aka BLE Central device)

2) All of your devices that you enroll in your "find my" service will be required to sending out a periodic BLE beacon or a similar bluetooth packet (BLE peripheral device)

3) The iPhone will periodically listen for BLE beacons and upon receiving that beacon it has 3 options:

->option 1, save the time/location when it saw that beacon

->option 2, scan the device with a BLE "scan request" operation which asks the device to provide more information -- it provides the "scan response" packet which can and often is different from the main advertisement packet

->option 3, connect to the device and query further information like your macbook battery level and maybe other info

For option 1, the iPhone never needs to send a packet ever and will simply have its BLE RX radio stage on listening for advertisement packets -- which are sent in clear text for anybody to listen to. The RX stage is listening periodically and works on a statistical basis where if the beacon side is transmitting very rarely then you can easily miss the beacon.

So.. what you should take away from this is that highly likely Apple will only allow the iPhone to be the master and all of your other devices will be periodically sending out beacons. So if you have this enabled and you walk around with your iPad Pro and your iPhone together and people sniff bluetooth packets, they can track when you walk down the sidewalk past you every day. For example if you live near a busy street in New York or something, start sniffing for bluetooth packets and you'll find tons of stuff. Tons.. most of it is random bluetooth headphones, but pretty soon it will be iPad Pro's.

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