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Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#561

Post by Zoepfli »

marcamillion wrote: post #521

How much weight does the claim that the Touch ID not being stored on Apple's servers really matter? They claim it is stored on the A7 chip itself. Is that secure enough for us to believe that the NSA can't get access to it? I am genuinely asking about the security implications. If all the fingerprints were on iCloud, then all the Feds have to do is force Apple to give them access to their servers. Having the fingerpr…

IMHO, Apple's claim doesn't matter at all. If the NSA wants to get inside your iPhone and add some code, it will find some way to do so - either with the help of Apple, through a backdoor or a recent vulnerability.

And once it's inside, the NSA is free to install a code snippet that uploads your fingerprint directly to their server.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#562

Post by mistercow »

eco wrote: post #427
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Explaining to a "geek with low reading comprehension", what is the actual benefit to the iPhone being 64-bit?

There are a lot of interesting things you can do with a massive address space even if you don't have the RAM to back it. You can mmap massive files. False pointers are virtually nonexistent for conservative GCs in a 64-bit environment (I believe modern Objective-C is compiler supported refcounting though so this doesn't really apply here). You can virtual alloc a 4GB array and just let it grow in physical memory on d…

> (I believe modern Objective-C is compiler supported refcounting though so this doesn't really apply here)

Yeah, I don't think they ever supported GC in iOS. Now that you mention it, it's probably not a coincidence that it was added to the Mac shortly after the entire product line had switched to 64-bit. You could still do it in 32-bit, but I doubt they were expecting many developers to start writing new 32-bit apps at that point.

What does use a conservative garbage collector on iOS, however, is Safari's JS engine. But I assume that the conservative scan is only used on the stack (that's what FF does), since it would be kind of silly to do a conservative scan of the heap for a language that doesn't support pointers. So it doesn't seem likely under normal circumstances that you'd have many false hits even with 32-bits.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#563

Post by brymaster »

dev_jim wrote: post #166
pilif wrote: post #73

Now that we have to consider the iPhones to be backdoored by the NSA, I wonder whether I really want to give them my fingerprint together with the rest of my data. I'm also not so sure whether a fingerprint can't still be easily faked (like it was possible on that Mythbusters episode for example). Personally, I think I'd rather stay with my passcode. Did you btw know that you can turn off "simple passcode" and then u…

Urgh. When do we get to the point where I can read HN without a snarky NSA comment being voted to the top?

> snarky NSA comment

Nope. This is called critical thinking especially given our current global surveillance state.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#564

Post by samstave »

anchorsteam wrote: post #545
samstave wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You called discussing the NSA spying on everyone, subverting the American system as well as the faith in the constitution similar to evangelising that Jesus loves you? Wow - that has to be hands down the absolute most ignorant, ridiculous and bullshit comment I have ever read on HN. This is The Best place to be talking about the National Security Agency Technologically spying on everyone, building in parallel infra a…

He did no such thing. Making a passing reference to the NSA whenever remotely possible is not discussion, let alone action. Perhaps we could leave such talk to the submissions that are actually about the NSA? Believe it or not, many of us are already familliar with the topic; as we are of Jesus.

>But you are accomplishing absolutely nothing here. Being annoying and ineffective doesn't help your cause. Do you know that Jesus loves you and he wants to save your soul?

To quote him. Please explain how he "did no such thing"

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#565

Post by brymaster »

jlgreco wrote: post #375
Asterick6 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop using snark. Use snide, sarcastic, or cynical instead. Snark is a word that's better off being forgotten in some dictionary of colloquial terms.

Why? Snark seems like a perfectly cromulent word.

"Snark" is one of those words that people first learned on HN and now reuse whenever there is a comment they don't like.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#566

Post by ececconi »

jarek wrote: post #514
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who enters the US has to get their fingerprints scanned (even tourists), it has been that way for many many years.

This is not completely accurate. At the very least, Canadians entering at land crossings are not scanned.

Through airports it's always happened to me. Through the Canadian border at Niagara Falls it didn't.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#568

Post by brymaster »

res0nat0r wrote: post #197
cheald wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably when the NSA stops illegally spying on the citizens it is supposed to serve.

We take for gospel that the NSA is spying on everyone in the world via every hardware device that has been created in the USA because of a few powerpoint slides. Interesting.

Wow. Sounds like somebody isn't paying enough attention.

> In one case, after the government learned that a foreign intelligence target had ordered new computer hardware, the American manufacturer agreed to insert a back door into the product before it was shipped, someone familiar with the request told The Times.

> At Microsoft, as The Guardian has reported, the N.S.A. worked with company officials to get pre-encryption access to Microsoft’s most popular services, including Outlook e-mail, Skype Internet phone calls and chats, and SkyDrive, the company’s cloud storage service.

Please do your duty as a human being and read more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet...

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#569

Post by hughw »

melling wrote: post #302
cheald wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not snarking at all. I'm observing that comments about the NSA are entirely apropos given the current climate we live in. Yes, you're right, at this point, it would take something extremely radical to convince us that the NSA isn't spying on us anymore. Therefore, we should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to…

But you are accomplishing absolutely nothing here. Being annoying and ineffective doesn't help your cause. Do you know that Jesus loves you and he wants to save your soul? You might as we'll be discussing religion or politics here. This is not the place. I heard your warning the first ten times.

I had not considered the privacy implications of fingerprint readers before. So I, for one, got a little benefit from the ancestor post.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#570

Post by jasomill »

baddox wrote: post #513
mixmastamyk wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, why I keep it in airplane mode most of the time.

Why would you believe that the radios are actually off when in airplane mode?

Generally speaking, because some regulatory agency or other would refuse or revoke certification of a device that has a "disable radio" feature that doesn't work.

I wouldn't assume that a device is incapable of accumulating GPS tracking information in "airplane mode" and forwarding it when the radio is turned back on, however, or that intelligence and law enforcement agencies would never quietly disable "airplane mode" in the course of specific investigations.

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