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Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

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21–30 of 433 posts

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've already announced that they will be adding RCS support.

... And they've already announced[1] that they will be retaining the exclusive blue bubble for iMessage messages for... reasons? The green/blue bubble distinction will continue even when there is no technical difference between messages. 1. https://mashable.com/article/apple-rcs-support

There is a technical difference though- the current RCS standard doesn’t have end to end encryption.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#22

The extra hardware registers might have been discovered by examining the chip itself. One could find where the registers were on it, and notice some extra registers, then do some experimenting to see what they did.

Do you know how this is possible? Would decapping the SoC or taking an xray of it provide a physical map of the registers?

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#23

State actor attacks on another state actor. Incredible sophisticated and just goes to show you that it basically can’t be defended against

However this one seems to have been coordinated with Apple. A nonprofit nonaligned independently managed project could be more immune to pressures of the national security apparatus. I think it is incredibly naïve to think that the largest US corporation does not cooperate. This is why I keep donating to GrapheneOS.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#24

Who had motive to target Russian government officials, knowledge of the attack vectors, history of doing so, and technical and logistical ability to perform it leads Kaspersky and myself to the only rational conclusion: that Apple cooperated with the NSA on this exploit. I assume they only use and potentially burn these valuable methods in rare and perhaps desperate instances. I expect the Russian and Chinese governm…

My adjacent conspiracy theory is that the NSA and other state agencies do both original research and pay hackers for exploits that Apple hasn’t yet discovered.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#25
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've already announced that they will be adding RCS support.

... And they've already announced[1] that they will be retaining the exclusive blue bubble for iMessage messages for... reasons? The green/blue bubble distinction will continue even when there is no technical difference between messages. 1. https://mashable.com/article/apple-rcs-support

Yep, why would they drop it? It’s especially egregious as Apple disregards its own human interface guidelines to make green bubbles excessively low-contrast. Very intentional.

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#26

Who had motive to target Russian government officials, knowledge of the attack vectors, history of doing so, and technical and logistical ability to perform it leads Kaspersky and myself to the only rational conclusion: that Apple cooperated with the NSA on this exploit. I assume they only use and potentially burn these valuable methods in rare and perhaps desperate instances. I expect the Russian and Chinese governm…

[deleted]

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#29

Who had motive to target Russian government officials, knowledge of the attack vectors, history of doing so, and technical and logistical ability to perform it leads Kaspersky and myself to the only rational conclusion: that Apple cooperated with the NSA on this exploit. I assume they only use and potentially burn these valuable methods in rare and perhaps desperate instances. I expect the Russian and Chinese governm…

My adjacent conspiracy theory is that the NSA and other state agencies do both original research and pay hackers for exploits that Apple hasn’t yet discovered.

but why pay hackers to try to find a backdoor when you can just walk in the front door and use the carrot and stick to get what you want?

Re: Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers

#30
post #5
post #4

It’s quite unfortunate that Apple doesn’t allow users to uninstall iMessage, it seems to be the infection vector for advanced threats like this, NSO group, etc. Presumably it’s to avoid the support burden, but they could gate it behind having Lockdown Mode enabled for a week or something to shake out the vast majority of mistaken activations.

They gotta, gotta , have those blue bubbles. Some teenagers fight to get an overpriced phone solely to avoid the deep deep shame of having a green bubble when chatting. If apple is forced to shut down iMessage being the exclusive option and have some pure SMS application they might see a sudden noticeable drop in market share.

They knew exactly what they were doing when they chose that nice blue and that cheap looking green.
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