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FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

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Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#191

Post by tedunangst »

Karupan wrote: post #180
nexuist wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devil's advocate (not a lawyer though): What constitutes a "phone"? Any device with cellular capabilities? What about WiFi calls? What if it's an industrial device with no network (LTE/data) access? Is a laptop with a 3G modem covered under this? I would suspect the problem is in defining what devices to target, and also the fact that forcing any company to modify the functionality could be perceived as…

Valid points. How about restricting the scope to devices connected to a network and having some sort of push notification capability? > In Apple's defense, it is pretty difficult to miss an update alert considering it comes through as (a) a push notification, (b) a mandatory alert, and (c) a persistent red badge on the Settings app. > I agree that it might be a good idea to differentiate between a normal update and a…

So... every computer running some sort of syslogd?

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#192

Post by dragonwriter »

hopler wrote: post #101
wmf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a form of speculation which increases performance in the common case where the call is accepted.

Similar to how Nextels cellular "push to talk" fake walkie talkies worked.

No, PTT would send audio from the caller without the receiver accepting anything, but it wouldn't send anything from the receiver without action on the receiver end.

It was obnoxious at times, but very different than the kind of privacy invasion that the receiver's sending data without active involvement is.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#193

Post by cheerlessbog »

samstave wrote: post #177
stiGGG wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear, I remember something similar was possible on iOS lockscreen multiple times. What version of Windows was that?

95. 98 had an even better one... just hitting cancel on some login boxes would let you in.

I believe that was by design: the dialog was an opportunity to authenticate with the domain. If you just wanted local access you could hit cancel. Remember Win9x was not a secure OS itself.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#194

Post by tedunangst »

notfed wrote: post #137
int_19h wrote: post #124

This sort of thing is why I'd prefer devices to come with hardware killswitches for mic, video, and various radio modules.

iPhones already have a "mute" slider switch. When I first looked into iPhones (after years of Androids), my instant reaction upon seeing the slider switch was "Ah! FINALLY! I can feel at peace in the knowledge that software vulnerabilities are powerless to hack my camera or microphone!" Of course, stupidly, the slider doesn't "mute" my camera or microphone, but only my speaker. For Apple to modify this slider so that…

Crazy but true: there are people who take pictures while their phone is in silent mode.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#195

Post by ipstas »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #13

I'm always curious how a bug like this ships. I mean QA & Testing should catch it, sure. But even before then. Some engineer wrote code for FaceTime that has it open the microphone before the call is accepted. And transmit the audio over the network before the call is accepted. Who did that? And why? I'm not suggesting malice but I do wonder at the lack of defensive programming.

To get a bug like that is easy. The question, who the hell still using FB facebug. And why?

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#196

Post by yalogin »

Jonnax wrote: post #12

Security and privacy are two big parts of the marketing for the iPhone. I'm curious how they can mitigate the reputational damage. Edit: It gets worse: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18201383/apple-facetime-b... If the recipient rejects the call by pressing the power button, it starts sending video.

Come on this is an overreaction. It’s a bug plain and simple. A bad one for sure but still Apple disabled the feature (allegedly) while they push a fix out. Shit happens.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#197

Post by flukus »

consumer451 wrote: post #142
segmondy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely 2 different teams worked on it. One worked on accepting calls, the other worked on transmitting audio, another probably worked on video. Then it got integrated and complete e2e testing wasn't done.

How would an e2e test catch this though? What would the test condition be? Wouldn’t I have to be checking for audio from the other party during all seemingly random events like adding a person to the call group? Apologies in advance for my ignorance, I haven’t written code for a long time.

> How would an e2e test catch this though?

I doubt there would be a specific test (or maybe there would, real testers are better than me at thinking of this stuff), but there should be logs for events like "microphone turned on" and "user joined group chat" and the testers should be monitoring those logs.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#198

Post by Twisell »

tedunangst wrote: post #73
Someone1234 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of this MacOS bug from last year, where simply hitting the login box over and over with no password would eventually bypass the security entirely: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/28/root_access_bypass_... And this other MacOS bug, also from last year, where the password hint would contain the plain text encryption password: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/05/apple_patches_passw... All within…

I find those bugs less puzzling because the timeline makes sense. You're not logged in, there's a prompt, you're logged in. Obvious bug in the prompt, but the A happens before B happens before C order is there. Call comes in, audio is recorded, call is accepted is not the expected order. I could imagine a bug where declining the call still accepts the call, because that still obeys the proper ordering, but this bug d…

I don’t use face time often, but isn’t there a "preview" of the camera feed during the prompt? I guess so that the user can check if he’s looking decent before engaging the call.

The bug could then be that the feed is sent over the call too early instead of being used solely for this local feedback.

Re: FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up

#200

Post by ta10101 »

2stop wrote: post #120
sixothree wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember turning on my iPhone and briefly seeing a picture of myself from a time when I had not taken any photos of myself. In fact I had not been using the front facing camera at all. Extra creepy.

If someone facetimes you and hangs up, that can happen. (I've noticed).

That is what happened with Signal(i was on iOS and the person i called was on android)
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