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Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

zdziarski.com

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Re: Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

#71
The packet tracer is an interface to a tcpdump-like facility that's used for debugging. It requires you to connect the device to a Mac host. The interface is publicly documented: https://developer.apple.com/library/Mac/qa/qa1176/_index.htm...

Re: Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

#76
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> evolve into the secure consumer device company They don't have this option. They are too big to not cooperate the US law enforcement and intelligence communities. They must cooperate, it's given. There are just way too many pressure points that can be exploited to make them cooperate, even against their will. If they start selling themselves as a secure and trustworthy device manufacturer you can rest assured it's…

but they DO have the option of designing their hardware and services to minimize trackable data, to get as close to "zero knowledge" as possible. The government cannot force them to collect data, only share data that they have collected. For example, there are alternatives to Dropbox that do this: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/17/edward-sno...

Hmm, interesting point actually.

Lavabit shown the government can demand installation of their own surveillance equipment on a company's premises to gather that data themselves. I wonder if they could make the same demand on a company like Apple to install their own back doors if Apple decided not to collect that information themselves.

Re: Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

#77
post #56

Why does Apple re-enable Bluetooth everytime you update iOS? "STOP RESISTING, WE WANT TO TRACK YOU" (iBeacon)

iBeacon is purely passive and cannot track you.

You could in theory set up a Bluetooth surveillance network though couldn't you? I really doubt that's remotely the goal for Apple but Bluetooth always on would make it possible I think.

Re: Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

#78
post #19
post #6

>This is due to iOS' behavior of automatically joining networks whose name (not MAC address) it recognizes, such as “linksys” or “attwifi”. Discriminating by MAC addresses would not help at all. MAC addresses are trivial to spoof, even though they are "in hardware". It would be cool if we had a standardized trust-on-first-use cryptographic authentication model for wireless APs, like we do with SSH right now. You conn…

Yeah, I've been shocked by how easy it is to get a brand new router and set it up with the same SSID and password and every device I have auto-connects like it's the same thing. If you have the AP password, it's trivial to set up a fake second router in the same vicinity (you don't even have to touch the original one) with a stronger signal and have everyone connect through your gateway. Of course, once you have the…

That kind of breaks down when you consider the fact that Wifi Networks can span multiple APs, and each AP can be running multiple Wifi Networks. For example a corporate or education campus where you have multiple APs for coverage, and then might have several SSIDs xyz-network, xyz-guest, xyz-lab that are running on every AP.

Re: Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

#79
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've been shocked by how easy it is to get a brand new router and set it up with the same SSID and password and every device I have auto-connects like it's the same thing. If you have the AP password, it's trivial to set up a fake second router in the same vicinity (you don't even have to touch the original one) with a stronger signal and have everyone connect through your gateway. Of course, once you have the…

That kind of breaks down when you consider the fact that Wifi Networks can span multiple APs, and each AP can be running multiple Wifi Networks. For example a corporate or education campus where you have multiple APs for coverage, and then might have several SSIDs xyz-network, xyz-guest, xyz-lab that are running on every AP.

If we were using an SSH-type model, there's no particular reason why APs which you control which share an SSID can't also share a private key. If you are the administrator of the APs and you want them all to be seen as the same network, you could just move the appropriate keys onto the appropriate routers. Running multiple networks is the same thing - generate one key per SSID and duplicate them across all APs.

According to the other comments, apparently something like this is already a feature in WPA2, so evidently it doesn't break down too much.

Re: Identifying backdoors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

#80
The key takeaway for me here is that it is much more difficult to access data on iOS devices if they are switched off.

So, if you are in a situation where you can expect that your device will be accessed (e.g. crossing the US border), switch it off ahead of time.

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