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How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

rambo.codes

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Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#101

Post by achierius »

miki123211 wrote: post #77
95014_refugee wrote: post #31

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in this case.

There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone. DFU mode boots entirely from read-only ROM, and from there, you can just restore everything via USB cable. Same applies to Apple Silicon Macs. You can damage the system, recovery and emergency recovery volumes, but even then, you can still boot into DFU from ROM and re-initialize everything via another Mac. This is in contrast to some PCs, where if you damag…

"physically" is overstating it. Certainly during development it's possible, which means that -- conditioned on a bad enough bug -- it could hypothetically happen to customers too. Not that I think that's likely, of course, but it is physically possible.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#102

Post by cryptonector »

This reminds me of how there is zero authorization for `NOTIFY` in PostgreSQL. IMO there should at least be the option to `CREATE CHANNEL ...` and then use `GRANT` to indicate who can `NOTIFY`.

In practice this is not a big problem because usually one grants very few users direct access to a PG DB.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#103

Post by e28eta »

icoder wrote: post #89
e28eta wrote: post #49

I’m fascinated that they aren’t requiring an entitlement for all usage of setting & posting notifications through this API. A way to share 64 bits of information (at a time) to any process on the device? That is right in the wheelhouse of tracking a user across apps. I don’t specifically know the types of things that you’d want to share across apps, but there’s a long history of cross process information channels bei…

The IDFV already supports tracking user across apps, as long as they are from the same vendor. It resets when apps from a vendor are removed from a device. Not sure if the user can reset it by themselves, but the vendor could then always tie things together using another self-generated identifier stored on the device, as long as any of its apps are on it, which boils down to the same. I think the approach you describ…

I think it’s most interesting for 3rd party SDKs (analytics, advertising, others?), because they’re in a position to have their code running in apps from different vendors.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#104

Post by kvetching »

In general, the vulnerability of our computers is major national security concern as we enter in the era of AGI. This administration needs to setup a system hardening commission. In the era of AI... if we aren't using the leading AI to hack our own systems first, then when the capability to use the latest models to hack is widely available, we are going to have a bad time.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#105

Post by bookofjoe »

miki123211 wrote: post #77
95014_refugee wrote: post #31

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in this case.

There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone. DFU mode boots entirely from read-only ROM, and from there, you can just restore everything via USB cable. Same applies to Apple Silicon Macs. You can damage the system, recovery and emergency recovery volumes, but even then, you can still boot into DFU from ROM and re-initialize everything via another Mac. This is in contrast to some PCs, where if you damag…

Right now someone in Fort Meade is falling off their chair laughing...

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#106

Post by kjkjadksj »

95014_refugee wrote: post #31

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in this case.

A tethered restore is still devastating considering how few people backup their iPhone.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#107

Post by Andrew6rant »

miki123211 wrote: post #77
95014_refugee wrote: post #31

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in this case.

There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone. DFU mode boots entirely from read-only ROM, and from there, you can just restore everything via USB cable. Same applies to Apple Silicon Macs. You can damage the system, recovery and emergency recovery volumes, but even then, you can still boot into DFU from ROM and re-initialize everything via another Mac. This is in contrast to some PCs, where if you damag…

> There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone.

There definitely are (If you count jailbroken iPhones). I've managed to brick one by removing all thermal throttling limits and subsequently damaging the motherboard with the world's shittiest watercooling setup.

Can't use DFU to restore if you've got damaged hardware

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#108

Post by varenc »

LunaSea wrote: post #85
tgv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is right in the wheelhouse of tracking a user across apps. The design is old. It probably predates facebook, so it's not been intentional, as your comment might be interpreted. But it certainly seems ripe for abuse. I'm curious if it would actually be used for that, because any app that can access internet already has a better way to share information.

Facebook predates iPhones by 3 years.

I was interning at Facebook in '07 when the first iPhone was released. Can confirm! Someone was 3rd in line at the Palo Alto Apple store and brought it over to the office.

Though iOS definitely predates 3rd party apps and the ad based economy. Which is a bit of a tautology.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#109

Post by nomel »

Koshcheiushko wrote: post #78
miki123211 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone. DFU mode boots entirely from read-only ROM, and from there, you can just restore everything via USB cable. Same applies to Apple Silicon Macs. You can damage the system, recovery and emergency recovery volumes, but even then, you can still boot into DFU from ROM and re-initialize everything via another Mac. This is in contrast to some PCs, where if you damag…

rm -rf is nightmare, if used mistakenly. I myself have been victim of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43775027

If you had root access on your iPhone, to do that, you would see a recovery message on your phone at the next reboot. Then, plugging it into your macBook, you would get a popup asking if you would like to restore it. Bricks don't usually have software restore prompts.

Re: How a single line of code could brick your iPhone

#110

Post by nomel »

Kerbonut wrote: post #37
the__alchemist wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From observation, "brick" has evolved, as things do in language. In practice, it rarely means the traditional definition you refer to, but the softer one used here.

Almost like a "soft"-brick, if you would.

I remember this being referred to as "the OS needs to be reinstalled", a trivial thing that nobody bothered to give a name to, because it was frequent and non-consequential.
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