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Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

positive.security

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Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#111

Post by tyingq »

varenc wrote: post #110
tyingq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rate limiting would help with the "hijacking the network to send your own data" piece in the original article. It wouldn't do much for other uses, like tracking people without their knowledge. A "faked AirTag", could, for example, rotate it's serial number to avoid triggering Apple's "AirTag Found Moving With You" feature. Or the opposite of that. You could stick a fake device on someone's car and trigger the "AirTag…

Presumably a valid serial number for each AirTag is something that can't be guessed? That's how it is with Apple's other products. Each serial number has some entropy in it and there's no way to generate a valid new one.

They are sequential: https://itechbrand.com/purple-iphone-12-is-the-first-apple-p...

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#112

Post by daniel_iversen »

thatcherc wrote: post #23

I was wondering if something like could be done to upload sensor data without a data connection and it looks like that's exactly what the authors here had in mind!: > Potential use cases > While I was mostly just curious about whether it would be possible, I wouldimagine the most common use case to be uploading sensor readings or any data from IoT devices without a broadband modem, SIM card, data plan or Wifi connect…

Could this be made into a cool emergency short messaging service during natural disasters or emergencies where connectivity may be unreliable or unavailable? Wonder how much “AirTags” payload one phone will proxy/buffer? And if/how well it works offline between phones?

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#113

Post by npunt »

astrange wrote: post #108
npunt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah another use case is broadcasting air quality metrics for consumption by the Health app, to start capturing exposure to various air environments you spend a lot of time in (office being primary example). I talk about this air quality broadcast a bit toward the end of my piece on repositioning HomePod around air quality - https://nickpunt.com/blog/apples-next-homepod-should-monitor...

Health doesn't track air quality, but HomeKit does, and I believe it already has a mesh protocol (Thread) though I don't know how it works.

Unfortunately Health doesn't yet store air quality, but I spelled out how air quality scores might be designed in the article. To the user it would be something akin to Fitness apps three rings but for different aspects of air quality: Safe, Fresh, and Comfortable. Within each would be specific air quality metrics (pm2.5, pm10, co, co2, vocs, temp/humidity, etc), which would sum up into three different scores for the three aspects. These would drive recommendations to the user.

I don't have an opinion on what protocol would work best, just that it needs to be localized pretty well to match up with the localization of air quality. My hunch is UWB is a better fit for that.

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#114

Post by yftsui »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #90
Animats wrote: post #88

The sending rate on the microcontroller is currently ~3 bytes/second. The latency is usually between 1 and 60 minutes. That's not much, but it has value for industrial machine-to-machine communications. (That's IoT without the hype.) Like commercial air conditioning units. They can send in minimal data ("compressor 1 running, compressor 2 stopped, system OK") to a maintenance service without needing a cellular accoun…

For critical data like that, it would make more sense to just have a modem on board. 5G should make this more possible with increased device limits.

5G is notoriously known for smaller coverage area than LTE, it made IOT impossible instead of possible.

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#115

Post by blamazon »

geoduck14 wrote: post #107
thatcherc wrote: post #23

I was wondering if something like could be done to upload sensor data without a data connection and it looks like that's exactly what the authors here had in mind!: > Potential use cases > While I was mostly just curious about whether it would be possible, I wouldimagine the most common use case to be uploading sensor readings or any data from IoT devices without a broadband modem, SIM card, data plan or Wifi connect…

By the way, you can get Bluetooth telemetry sensors that connect to your phone and upload the data via cell phone. It might be easier than any of the stuff you described above.

That’s not what they want to do. If a phone has to be present near your sensor, either you have to be near the sensor or have two phones.

This way you can be away from the sensor and also only have one phone.

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#116

Post by mendigou »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #93
spoonjim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a mechanism like this used to deliver email in rural India. There were basically email “kiosks” which would let you receive and send mail for a fee and would store these messages locally until a truck with the company’s transponder stopped at the village, at which point it would send the data to the truck which would upload the data to the Internet when it reached the city. Obviously obviated by mobile data.

In 2006, I did a summer internship at NASA implementing the Bundle protocol [1]. It assumes intermittent connectivity and/or large delays between transfers. For example, you have intermittent line-of-sight between Mars and a tracking station on earth or line-of-sight between a rover and an orbiter on the far side of Mars that will at some point in the future relay the data onto Earth. I can't find it in the RFC, but…

Do you know if there are open reference implementations of this protocol?

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#117

Post by m463 »

laurent92 wrote: post #82
spoonjim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a mechanism like this used to deliver email in rural India. There were basically email “kiosks” which would let you receive and send mail for a fee and would store these messages locally until a truck with the company’s transponder stopped at the village, at which point it would send the data to the truck which would upload the data to the Internet when it reached the city. Obviously obviated by mobile data.

The process of delivering the internet by trucks is quite laughable, yet SMTP is the perfect protocol for that: Mail can hop from server to server until it finds the right one, as opposed to now where SMTP hosts like Gmail only accepts mail sent from or to a Gmail account.

Back when computers were connected only intermittently, UUCP was the means of doing this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#118

Post by jonny_eh »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #89
mvanaltvorst wrote: post #30

Does this fall within Apple's policy of fair use? Would be great if there were an officially supported (paid) API for this, the technology and potential use cases are great. I'm afraid hooking something like this up to my Apple ID will get me banned somehow.

Why would you be afraid? According to HN Apple is not a monopoly and plenty of viable alternatives exist. /s

I'd be afraid of losing my house, but it's not the only place I could live.

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#119

Post by ALittleLight »

meepmorp wrote: post #68
tyingq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have to be automatic for it to be used to kill off "fake AirTags" . Unless Apple is willing to take the hit of all the complaining.

Why couldn't they update the firmware automatically? They already do that with AirPods, iirc.

Then you'd have the problem of new air tags not working until they'd been updated. It's something of a minor problem, but unless people actually misuse this enough to be a worse problem, I don't see why Apple would update to disable this.

Re: Emulating AirTags to upload arbitrary data via Apple's FindMy network

#120

Post by tppiotrowski »

mendigou wrote: post #116
tppiotrowski wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2006, I did a summer internship at NASA implementing the Bundle protocol [1]. It assumes intermittent connectivity and/or large delays between transfers. For example, you have intermittent line-of-sight between Mars and a tracking station on earth or line-of-sight between a rover and an orbiter on the far side of Mars that will at some point in the future relay the data onto Earth. I can't find it in the RFC, but…

Do you know if there are open reference implementations of this protocol?

I haven’t looked since I worked on it. I think it kind of fell into the dustbin of history...
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