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Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

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11–20 of 267 posts

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#12
Yep, that's not going to spark conspiracy theories and damage the brand at all, just like the backdoor they've recently put in. /s

Again, why would $3T company damage its brand like that? It's not "for children" and certainly not to "find your phone". There's something going on there.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#13
post #11

Maybe I missed it in the article but how does it work with Bluetooth exactly — how does that help my find my phone over a long distance? What’s the Bluetooth connecting to and how does the phone get the request?

The idea is that someone else's apple device finds it, then you can see where the last place someone was in bluetooth range of your device.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#14
Is Matthew Green some industry security personality that people respect? I appreciate this write up, it's interesting. But it seems motivated by his little Twitter rant the other day. Who is he beyond some Twitizen in a Guy Fawkes mask who hates HN? I don't particularly like his demeanor, at least from his rather naively uninformed tantrum the other day. Didn't seem very professional or respectable so I just wrote him off.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#15
Very interesting read. This seems to be implemented as a Bluetooth LE app running on the ultra-low power “always on processor” used for a variety of features, like “wake-up on motion.”

Much like an Tile or AirTag is implemented. No comment on what this is capable in the future.. but for now this shows power usage / signal strength / proximity of other “actually on” devices are a limitations of this feature.

What’s impressive is the mesh network effect of all these iPhones / iDevices to locate a “lost” device. I’ll be thankful if I manage to use this to retrieve a lost phone. I’ll be pretty shocked if I’m “spied on” with this style of device.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#16
I think this is important research if only for the fact that it illuminates the states of CPU as they apply to threat models for users. It wasnt too long ago that many state sponsored Android hacks were revealed to work due to 2 separate unlock states in the system, and so long as an initial unlock had been performed, most of the phone could be hacked through services that were running in the background on the network.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#17
post #11

Maybe I missed it in the article but how does it work with Bluetooth exactly — how does that help my find my phone over a long distance? What’s the Bluetooth connecting to and how does the phone get the request?

The Find My Network is, basically, every Apple device out in the world. Using bluetooth in this fashion, all the other devices participating in the network and in the area of the phone (or AirTags, they work similarly) will receive the bluetooth broadcast. They'll then communicate that to Apple's system. So when you go to find your device, its most recent known location can be provided to you. They've got some cryptographic mechanisms in place (I haven't researched them) that ensure that the systems receiving the broadcast don't know anything other than that it is an "I'm an Apple Device and here's some cryptographic data" message.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#19
post #14

Is Matthew Green some industry security personality that people respect? I appreciate this write up, it's interesting. But it seems motivated by his little Twitter rant the other day. Who is he beyond some Twitizen in a Guy Fawkes mask who hates HN? I don't particularly like his demeanor, at least from his rather naively uninformed tantrum the other day. Didn't seem very professional or respectable so I just wrote hi…

Get a load of this I've got BIG NEWS I hope you're ready for my thread.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#20
post #19
post #14

Is Matthew Green some industry security personality that people respect? I appreciate this write up, it's interesting. But it seems motivated by his little Twitter rant the other day. Who is he beyond some Twitizen in a Guy Fawkes mask who hates HN? I don't particularly like his demeanor, at least from his rather naively uninformed tantrum the other day. Didn't seem very professional or respectable so I just wrote hi…

Get a load of this I've got BIG NEWS I hope you're ready for my thread.

So it turns out APPLE did something I didn't know about.
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