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Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

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Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#121

Post by ic4l »

semiotagonal wrote: post #104
ic4l wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure who downvoted you. But I agree 100% with this, he is a high value target.

I feel like a high value target to me , though. If the environment is untrustworthy enough for Zuckerberg to defend himself against it, he should consider his own role in making it that way.

But the truth is you should always treat your environment as untrustworthy. I don't think you should deduct him points for blocking his webcam.

It is an ADDITIONAL privacy step. He runs a company with thousands of employees, and with any company like that you never know if someone may decide to become a bad actor, and physically compromise him.

But yeah lets continue to hate on facebook.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#122

Post by aaroninsf »

BoorishBears wrote: post #90
egdod wrote: post #70

None of these “bugs” ever seem to result in accidentally accessing less data. How odd.

What is this comment even trying to say? There are plenty of bugs that result in less data... many of them are called crashes and FB has them just like any other app.

ELI5:

It's a pithy sardonic addition to the chorus of scorn rightly directed at Facebook, rearticulating the consensus opinion that one consequence of their persistent malfeasance and its regular public disclosure is a profound loss of trust, such that genuine mistakes will never be perceived as such; and furthermore, this creates a self-perpetuating cycle in which embarrassing true bugs are interleaved with further documentation of bad faith in such a way that the distinction is not only lost but essentially irrelevant.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#123

Post by president »

lmilcin wrote: post #9
saagarjha wrote: post #8

> “I guess it does say something when Facebook trust has eroded so badly that it will not get the benefit of the doubt when people see such a bug,” said Strafach.

Exactly. That what happens when you are repeatedly caught lying and then reversing your statements only after you were caught and then pretending nothing happened.

Sadly, it seems to be the norm in business and society these days. It all started when people started espousing "it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" nonsense, which I guess is one of the pillars that made Silicon Valley what it is today. And now it's a race to the bottom as everybody now needs to follow the same philosophy to compete.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#124

Post by egdod »

aaroninsf wrote: post #122
BoorishBears wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this comment even trying to say? There are plenty of bugs that result in less data... many of them are called crashes and FB has them just like any other app.

ELI5: It's a pithy sardonic addition to the chorus of scorn rightly directed at Facebook, rearticulating the consensus opinion that one consequence of their persistent malfeasance and its regular public disclosure is a profound loss of trust, such that genuine mistakes will never be perceived as such; and furthermore, this creates a self-perpetuating cycle in which embarrassing true bugs are interleaved with further…

Better than I could have explained it myself.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#125

Post by dylan604 »

9dl wrote: post #119
vonmoltke wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who here is defending "corporations" (by which I assume you mean corporate bad behavior)? Do you think Facebook and their ilk are the only actors who might want to hijack the cameras on your devices?

There is no good corporate behavior >Who here is defending "corporations" dylan604 try to change focus of attention. This is type of manipulation. And in this context, this is defence >Do you think Facebook and their ilk are the only actors who might want to hijack the cameras on your devices? Nope. But for some reason fb can't do QA. At all And this do most of the work for other "actors" Why this happens?

wait, what? i am not defending evil corp at all. IMO, my comment about covering the camera on your device is purely self-defense because evil corp can't be trusted. how you can twist my self-defense suggestion as defending evil corp's decision to nefariously use the webcam is some serious bending of logic

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#126

Post by lmilcin »

president wrote: post #123
lmilcin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. That what happens when you are repeatedly caught lying and then reversing your statements only after you were caught and then pretending nothing happened.

Sadly, it seems to be the norm in business and society these days. It all started when people started espousing "it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" nonsense, which I guess is one of the pillars that made Silicon Valley what it is today. And now it's a race to the bottom as everybody now needs to follow the same philosophy to compete.

In a way it is the same thinking that speeding drivers use. They need to get somewhere in a hurry and it is too much to be bothered and slowed down by being careful. Traffic rules as a source of nuisance. Then when an accident happens or get caught by police they will blame bad luck or everybody else.

Thinking long term (playing the infinite game) is so overrated...

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#127

Post by codyb »

dylan604 wrote: post #115
eindiran wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting stickers over your cameras might be a reasonable thing to do, but it's pretty silly to pretend your threat model is the same as Mark Zuckerberg's.

I keep reading similar statements on HN. Are we honestly saying that because of Zuck's "stature", there are more people actively attacking him than people taking access of an attack vector to gain access to as many people/devices as possible? Sure, some hacker might get some cred points for being the one to hack the Zuck, but ultimately these guys are after financial gains. This seems to be a prime example of quantit…

I’d be almost certain that there are more people looking to crack exceedingly high value targets like politicians, and billionaires than there are me.

There’s also people looking to crack huge swathes of the population, but state level actors seem more interested in breaking key individuals for blackmail, and espionage.

Although some state level actors are interested in mass surveillance as well.

Tl;dr: yes, Zuckerberg has more to worry about with his devices than the average individual.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#128

Post by dang »

imchillyb wrote: post #79
nealdt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also nice reminder about that lovely photo of Zuck with a sticker covering up his webcam. Now why would he do something like that ... ?

Those persons stupid enough to leave a webcam uncovered when not in use deserve the consequences of their actions. Those who leave a microphone operational when not in use also deserve the consequences of their actions. Stupid people reap stupid rewards.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments to Hacker News?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#129

Post by wewegogo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #92

And this is the problem with losing trust. It's perfectly plausible that this could have been a bug. It could also have been some type of performance enhancement, e.g. initialize the camera in the background so you can begin a video call more quickly. But do you believe them? Facebook has scourged any goodwill I ever had for them.

but why when scrolling instead of when the app is initialized?

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#130

Post by vonmoltke »

pc86 wrote: post #117
vonmoltke wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, obviously, and I never said it did. It prevents the camera from being used to surreptitiously record useful information when a machine has been remotely compromised. It's the same reason nothing with a transmitter is permitted in classified areas without specific authorization. Preventing a remote takeover is effectively impossible, but these steps reduce the usefulness of such an action (which is part of…

> > > It's just good (paranoid?) OPSEC to defend against remote takeover exploits. > > > [Camera shutters are] just good (paranoid?) OPSEC to defend against remote takeover exploits. > > > [Camera shutters are] ... good ... [defense] against remote takeover exploits. Clearly I misunderstood your intent, but the comment does seem to indicate what I thought.

Nothing there says or indicates anything about preventing takeovers. Preventing is a strict subset of defending against.
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