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Cracking Siri

applidium.com

41–50 of 105 posts

Re: Cracking Siri

#41

The question that springs to my mind is not 'how can I play with this?' but 'Are Apple bringing Siri to the desktop?', seeing as it appears there's nothing specific to the 4S hardware in how this works. I'd quite like to be able to add calendar entries or tweet without moving to another application.

I think the 4S-specific hardware is the improved proximity detector. This allows you to raise the phone to your ear and speak to Siri instantly. I suspect the older phones' proximity sensor isn't fast enough to support that feature, so Apple figured they'd go 4S only. (It can't hurt that they sell more phones that way.)

Re: Cracking Siri

#42
post #23

It'd be interesting to see whether or not Apple changed the Siri protocol since the acquisition. Was this originally how Siri worked when it was independent? Because Siri has roots in government contracting (it's named after SRI International, and was originally funded by DARPA) I wonder if the roots of the obfuscation start there rather than at Apple.

I don't see any obfuscation here, just a compressed binary encoding.

Re: Cracking Siri

#43
> The iPhone 4S sends identifiers everywhere.

So if I'm reading this right, Apple is sending UDIDs over HTTP?

Re: Cracking Siri

#46
post #3

Is there a possibility to craft a Siri server reply with malicious code? Shouldn't be too hard for the applidium guys to attempt (maybe even use a fuzzer?)

Maybe, but then you need to manually add your own root CA to the iPhone, or the cert verification will fail, so it's not a security issue.

Might be a way to jailbreak the phone though, no?

Re: Cracking Siri

#47
post #36

Anyway, this is a proof that siri is a pure cloud service and as such may work even on 5-yo Sagem...

Not exactly. The text-to-speech is done in the cloud, but the hard part (algorithmically speaking) is natural language processing, which apparently (I don't know for sure) is still done on the phone.

I don't know what Apple's excuse is though, but limited processing power is certainly not a problem.

Re: Cracking Siri

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They potentially can; commercial firewalls can man-in-the-middle HTTPS traffic with a locally signed and organization-computer-trusted SSL certificate.

Yes, you're right, in fact I found a few weeks ago that even Squid can do that.

Fiddler also: http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler/help/httpsdecryption.asp

Great for debugging third party https stuff.

Re: Cracking Siri

#49
post #47
post #36

Anyway, this is a proof that siri is a pure cloud service and as such may work even on 5-yo Sagem...

Not exactly. The text-to-speech is done in the cloud, but the hard part (algorithmically speaking) is natural language processing, which apparently (I don't know for sure) is still done on the phone. I don't know what Apple's excuse is though, but limited processing power is certainly not a problem.

I think you have it exactly backwards - the iPhone 4S/Siri speech-to-text/natural language processing are done in the CLOUD. The text-to-speech is done on the phone itself. My (non-Siri of course) iPhone 4's Voice Command stuff is COMPLETELY on the phone itself, and would do TtS of my contact list and Artist names, etc.

Re: Cracking Siri

#50

The question that springs to my mind is not 'how can I play with this?' but 'Are Apple bringing Siri to the desktop?', seeing as it appears there's nothing specific to the 4S hardware in how this works. I'd quite like to be able to add calendar entries or tweet without moving to another application.

Apple has clearly had a difficult time keeping up with early demand for Siri services as it is.

I think keeping it limited to the 4S looks a lot more like a operational necessity at this time.

Given that, If Siri appears on the Mac between major OS releases, I imagine it might be only for new hardware (i.e. a Macbook Air with an exterior Siri button and purple LED) at first as well.

Eventually (once they can scale Siri well enough), it could be released as a modestly-priced Mac App Store app. I bet it would be more pricy than FaceTime ($0.99 US) though.

I presume that's what they'll end up doing for existing iOS customers, pegging Siri for iPhone 4 and recent Touches at a price that keeps 4S customers satisfied to get early access and/or "free" Siri for the life of their phone.

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