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Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

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Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#51

Post by kube-system »

bongodongobob wrote: post #24
NavinF wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non sequitur. You could say that about any high quality set of headphones since they're capable of much higher power output than hearing aids.

I'm not saying it makes sense, but that's the idea.

No, medical devices are regulated because society demands a certain degree of certainty from those who claim to treat medical issues. Most societies don't want it to be legal to sell snake oil to vulnerable people suffering from a health issue.

There are many dangerous unregulated things that can destroy your hearing or vision. But they don't claim to protect them.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#52

Post by alistairSH »

miki123211 wrote: post #45
observationist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, and nearly everywhere else this type of hearing assist tech is sold, the Hearing Aid cartel is responsible for lobbying and influencing and bribing officials to maintain a stranglehold on their cash cow. Retired, elderly people with extra cash get screwed over with markup rates of 40,000% or more (yes, that's the right number of zeros.) Hearing aid technology, along with DSPs and specialized high quality,…

Is the certification required for things labeled as hearing aids, or for things that perform hearing-aid-like functions? Could you sell a "heering eyd" or an "in-ear sound amplifier that lets ornithology enthusiasts hear faraway birds better", which incidentally functions as a (non-insurance-covered) hearing aid, at least for those who can Reddit?

In the US, it's a bit of a mix.

There are ~3 categories of hearing devices in the US... 1. Prescription hearing aids - go to audiologist, pay $$$$$$ for devices 2. OTC hearing aids - AirPod Pro etc - less money 3. PSAP - Personal Sound Amplification Product

In theory, from top to bottom, you loose features and complexity. But, I haven't been able to find a good summary of technical requirements for each tier of device, just vague language.

Very generally, PSAP is a "dumb" amplifier - all frequencies get amplified - often used by hunters and bird watchers to hear animals.

What I can't figure out is the difference in requirements between OTC and prescpription - is there some feature that Apple CANNOT deliver OTC that a prescription device may?

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#53

Post by thel3l »

vintagedave wrote: post #40
thel3l wrote: post #31

Hey! I'm Rithwik, one of the authors of the article, happy to answer questions etc!

Awesome article. This kind of hacking casually showing iOS app behavior is another world, especially because I thought they were so locked down. How did you get started, any recommendations? Since you did not end up having bought yourself a very expensive set of earphones, what earphones do you use — or want to get?

haha, I think I've got many miles to go before I'm qualified to answer this :')

I've just been hacking away at things since I was in middle school, am lucky that there's some transfer. LLMs have also been a huge unlock—really cool to be able to try things at near speed of thought!

> what earphones do you use — or want to get? I'm very happy with my Shure Aonic 3s, a very loyal IEMs guy!

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#54

Post by userbinator »

It appears that the Hearing Aid feature is actually an equalizer preset that is pushed to the AirPods and will replace your transparency mode.

Apple could've just not marketed these as "hearing aids" or used the medical terminology, as every other TWS with parametric EQ and transparency mode can do the same thing, and they wouldn't have the regulatory hawks going after them. They only lose the marketing edge, but perhaps that was a huge calculated risk.

There's an incredible amount of processing power and flexibility in these things. Even the sub-$10 ones using the infamous JieLi SoCs - a 160MHz 32-bit computer in each ear. I'm surprised there hasn't yet been any TWS advertised with open-source firmware, although there's been some work in the usual Chinese (and Russian) communities on customisations.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#55

Post by nfriedly »

userbinator wrote: post #54

It appears that the Hearing Aid feature is actually an equalizer preset that is pushed to the AirPods and will replace your transparency mode. Apple could've just not marketed these as "hearing aids" or used the medical terminology, as every other TWS with parametric EQ and transparency mode can do the same thing, and they wouldn't have the regulatory hawks going after them. They only lose the marketing edge, but per…

> I'm surprised there hasn't yet been any TWS advertised with open-source firmware

Let me introduce you to the PineBuds Pro: https://pine64.com/product/pinebuds-pro-open-firmware-capabl...

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#56

Post by thel3l »

carbonguy wrote: post #38
thel3l wrote: post #31

Hey! I'm Rithwik, one of the authors of the article, happy to answer questions etc!

Mainly just wanted to say, this is an absolutely fantastic hack and I loved reading about it - thank you for sharing! I guess if I have one question, it would be... what else are you planning to do with your new Faraday cage?

Thank you for reading and the kind words! We're almost looking forward to this loophole being shut down to really make things a tad bit more challenging haha

We've got some ideas for the Faraday cage—a whole bunch of networks research and hacking that we can do without messing up live systems! It's also really nice to be able to test a device in isolation, without worrying about whether it's phoning back home in some way.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#57

Post by kube-system »

enjaydee wrote: post #42
sneak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be illegal for them to sell AirPods in many countries without these lockouts. The sale of medical devices is heavily regulated in most places. Headphones: legal. Hearing aids: not. Blame the government, not the company that's following the rules laid down.

Blame governments for regulating medical devices? You're going to need a better argument than that. This is entirely on Apple not applying for regulatory approval.

Is that even the case? Did they not apply anywhere else? Do they even qualify anywhere else? This wouldn't even have been possible under US law until recently.

If Apple tried to do this in the past in the US, they would have made it illegal to buy AirPods without a prescription, which is obviously a regulatory nonstarter.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#58

Post by rodgerd »

capitainenemo wrote: post #19
resonanttoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDA has to certify the devices for use as hearing aids in the U.S Other countries have similar regulatory bodies the certify the use of a medical device. Hearing aids (and things sold as it) are medical devices.

Fair enough - that certainly explains the situation in the US, where they were allowed. It just seemed surprising to me that every country in the world has medical device certification for anything that calls itself a hearing aid, forcing apple to restrict it to just 2 or 3 countries. You'd think in some it would be linked to what's covered by state medical care, or sold with a particular emblem or... Actually, could…

> It just seemed surprising to me that every country in the world has medical device certification for anything that calls itself a hearing aid,

"Trusting the FDA" instead of having your own evaluation seems a lot less foolish now that Americans have decided to put a guy in charge of the FDA who wants to get rid of vaccines.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#59

Post by kube-system »

josephcsible wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> It couldn't have been easy or cheap for them to add all these antifeatures.

It was definitely cheap to add this region lock: it's a single `if` statement calling existing system libraries. The regulatory side of this is the expensive part, and it varies by country, and many places make it illegal for hearing aids to be sold over the counter no matter how much Apple wants to release it there. Even the US would have prohibited this feature until regulatory changes that happened in 2022.

Re: Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages

#60

Post by tumblestick »

thel3l wrote: post #31

Hey! I'm Rithwik, one of the authors of the article, happy to answer questions etc!

Hi Rithwik -- great work. My Nana would have been thrilled to know this was possible :)

If I can ask -- what program did you use to generate the code maps in your article?

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