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Couldn't a software change on the iPhone side prevent it?
I can't find anything that shows OTA firmware updates of the tags themselves happening. Yes, you could tweak the iPhone, but if a "emulated tag" looks exactly like a "real tag that can't be updated", you're somewhat limited.
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I can't find anything that shows OTA firmware updates of the tags themselves happening. Yes, you could tweak the iPhone, but if a "emulated tag" looks exactly like a "real tag that can't be updated", you're somewhat limited.
I was thinking something more along the lines of rate limiting, doesn't this exploit depend on lots of spammy requests?
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 Found Moving With You" warning over and over by periodically changing the serial number after the user suppressed the warning for a particular AirTag.
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AirTags run firmware that can be remotely upgraded.
Any more info on "can be" ? For existing AirTags, they would have to already have that functionality (polling for updates). I can't find anything that says they do.
As there's a limit of 16 AirTags per Apple ID, and each AirTag's keys rotate every 15 minutes, presumably Apple can detect if anyone is abusing the system by sending more than 16 different "messages" per 15 minutes. They can't detect this when the fake airtags are sending, but can detect it from stored message timestamps when you query. If they start to see this being abused a lot, they can then block Apple IDs. To a…
Suppose a real AirTag owner is wondering where their lost tag is. Although it would be ideal to learn where it is right now they'd be somewhat happy to know where an iPhone "saw" it two hours ago, or indeed a week ago... and Apple's system deliberately stores up to a week of data. A week is about 700 keys to check. For one "lost" device, but as you note Apple are happy for you to buy more than a dozen, and of course…
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Any more info on "can be" ? For existing AirTags, they would have to already have that functionality (polling for updates). I can't find anything that says they do.
I’d be surprise if Apple fielded AirTags without any way to update their firmware. I doubt it would be automatic though, you’d have to push an update to them from an iDevice.
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AirTags run firmware that can be remotely upgraded.
Any more info on "can be" ? For existing AirTags, they would have to already have that functionality (polling for updates). I can't find anything that says they do.
AirPods upgrade firmware automatically, chances are it works in the same way.
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Every message uploaded to the "Find My" network very slightly degrades the user experience for all Apple users - since it is using up CPU cycles, battery and bandwidth of random strangers iPhones. I wonder what the capacity of the network is before the impact on battery life becomes significant...
It uses BLE (I believe), and data upload can be combined with other requests on the iPhone's next cellular connection request. CPU use is going to be extremely minimal. BLE power usage for a low data rate transmission is very, very low. I don't really see any realistic density of AirTags that would have any measurable impact on energy use of nearby iPhones.
On Android at least, getting a GPS fix takes many seconds, during which the CPU cannot sleep. For that reason, a default Android phone won't power up the GPS for hours on end sometimes. Yet this find-my feature might require a GPS position every few minutes whenever a new tag is seen. That's a lot of extra power.
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I’d be surprise if Apple fielded AirTags without any way to update their firmware. I doubt it would be automatic though, you’d have to push an update to them from an iDevice.
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.
6G is going to be devices we carry around becoming TX/RX instead of building out mmWave APs every few meters.
Apple should embrace this fully and create their own decentralized network
It is only decentralized if the entire world is covered in Apple devices every few meters. At the moment they are simply extensions to a nearby router or cell tower.
Give it a few decades...