Live data from Hacker News

iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

bugs.chromium.org

241–250 of 279 posts

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#241

Stupid question: How is the example python program actually sending an iMessage? Since Apple generally has the system locked down.

Apple doesn't lock down iMessage sending. A long time ago I've used AppleScript to automating sending messages (SMS/iMessage) successfully. These days you can probably use JavaScript as well.

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#242

Speaking as an ex-Apple employee, I'll just point out that a really malicious actor could have used this to harm some significant percentage of the installed iOS infrastructure, and done critical damage to Apple as a company with it. In fact, I don't know the percentage of users still on <12.3, but maybe they still could. A band-aid fix for this one bug should not be where they stop here.

> A band-aid fix for this one bug should not be where they stop here. What do you suggest they do?

Would it not be possible to detect malformed messages, and prevent them from being sent to a phone in the first place?

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#243
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not all malware is a "virus." Haha, this is called moving the goal post. Fanboys do this all the time :) Edit: Plenty of buffer overflow and momory corruptions are listed for iOS just in 2019. https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=...

buffer overflow and memory corruption is not a virus. He asked a specific question, and people answered different questions while ignoring the question he actually asked.

His specific question is just a diversion tactics. Parent comment was about Apple intentionally misleading gullible people for many years by claiming that MACs don't get virus. They didn't change until high profile attacks hit and it was no longer viable to make the claim.

Instead of commenting on this, he just moved the goal post to iOS never getting a Virus. What does iOS never getting a Virus has anything to do with Apple being dishonest?

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#244
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a boot loop condition. The person reporting it clearly knows this and yet confused the issue by saying "bricked." Bricked is non-recoverable.

Can you provide your definition of non-recoverable? An extreme example: someone could tear down the phone down to every single last nanometer-scale transistor and polymer, fix the problem and reassemble it; that would make it recoverable from even most scenarios of destruction, hell, with enough energy available one could in theory fuse/fusion it down into iron and reconstruct the very elements themselves in order to…

I'm curious, what component could you replace in this instance to recover the iPhone and not lose data?

One could argue that every single component on a device could be replaced to bring it back from the dead, but I would argue it isn't the same device at that point.

Bricked is a term that is, and always has been, defined as hardware that is rendered useless by bad software. Replacing hardware components to get a device working is not un-bricking it.

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#245
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha on Yahoo we called it booting.

On AOL we called it "punting", and the apps that facilitated it were the first reason I ever wanted to code.

my little secret to not getting punted on aol was to remove the aolrich.dll which was responsible for parsing all the html the client received. those were great days!

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#246
post #75
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security researchers have to assume that if they've found a vulnerability, it's only a matter of time before the evil people will find it as well - that is if they haven't found it already. That's why all disclosures come with window - if they don't, the companies aren't under any pressure to update their systems, the exploit start being used in the wild, etc. The window is not ideal, but it is better than no window.…

Still make no sense, I agree the window is a good policy to force lazy vendors to act as they should. But what’s the point of reducing the window for nice vendors who quickly delivered a patch? This is totally counter productive. In order to incentivize vendors to deliver patches more and more quickly, good actors should profits from that extra time to secure their user base. In a ideal world that might even permit t…

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the vendor asked for it to be disclosed late in the afternoon before a long holiday weekend (in the US) with the hope that mainstream press outlets would not notice.

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#247
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A band-aid fix for this one bug should not be where they stop here. What do you suggest they do?

they can force-push emergency fixes

This isn't easy on iOS, and that doesn't sound like a particularly good idea anyways.

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#248
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A band-aid fix for this one bug should not be where they stop here. What do you suggest they do?

Would it not be possible to detect malformed messages, and prevent them from being sent to a phone in the first place?

No idea; it might be that Apple can't detect these because they're encrypted.

Re: iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haha, this is called moving the goal post. Fanboys do this all the time :) Ignoring the jab, which has no place here, malware is a general term which includes viruses. From the Wikipedia page on computer viruses ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus ): > The term "virus" is also misused by extension to refer to other types of malware. "Malware" encompasses computer viruses along with many other forms of ma…

> The majority of active malware threats are actually trojan horse programs or computer worms rather than computer viruses. What's your point here? Hidden malware secretly watching your phone is better than explicit virus? Ignorance is bliss I guess. > defining characteristic of viruses is that they are self-replicating computer programs which modify other software without user consent. and Malware doesn't replicate?

> Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Unless your goal is to get people to stop responding to you, don't do this.

> and Malware doesn't replicate?

It does when it's a virus. See the relationship between viruses and malware that I mentioned earlier.

Post reply on HN