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Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
71–80 of 142 posts
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#72There are a lot of comments here about how useless these protections are, because A or B already exist, or C works better for stalking. I think most of those comments are missing the real point here. If an Apple product were ever used to stalk - or God forbid, harm - an individual, it would be a big national story. If a Tile or a Samsung tag (or an amazon gps tracker made for stalking) were used in the same way, it w…
Especially because apple has a lot riding on their use of crowdsourcing even though they have a privacy stance. Personally I think privacy and crowdsourcing cannot go together, no matter how much algebra and privacy boilerplate is thrown in.
> privacy and crowdsourcing cannot go together
Not to downplay the difficulty of these things, but cryptography literally enables things that seem impossible, so I wouldn't write it off that easily
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially because apple has a lot riding on their use of crowdsourcing even though they have a privacy stance. Personally I think privacy and crowdsourcing cannot go together, no matter how much algebra and privacy boilerplate is thrown in.
Note that Tile already does this mesh network of crowdsourcing. The issue is that Apple pushes privacy so much that it's bound to be a bigger story when they mess up compared to others, as stated in the OP.
If someone slips an AirTag in your car to stalk you, your own phone would enable your stalker because by default it would automatically update the location of the AirTag, even if you are not an AirTag user.
It is a bit different if your stalker used Tile to track you. You'd have to download that app and opt in.
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#74How exactly can stalking protection work with apples claim that the system doesn't provide any outsider or apple themselves the ability to track your airtag? Surely stalking protection is doing exactly that? Couldn't I take a modded/hacked iPhone and track somebody elses tag all day long from near the edge of UWB range? Apples original paper [1] said the signals emitted contained no unique/trackable identifier except…
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#75How exactly can stalking protection work with apples claim that the system doesn't provide any outsider or apple themselves the ability to track your airtag? Surely stalking protection is doing exactly that? Couldn't I take a modded/hacked iPhone and track somebody elses tag all day long from near the edge of UWB range? Apples original paper [1] said the signals emitted contained no unique/trackable identifier except…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26878110
> The random ID has a fixed suffix in the spec, so you can infer that it’s the same AirTag if you see the same suffix across multiple rotations.
So if that suffix is 8 or more bits, as soon as you have an airtag on your keys, wallet, and bag, you've become a nice easy to track person.
If the suffix is less than 8 bits, then the 200 airtags around me in a classroom setting will always be falsely setting off the alert - at least one of those 256 possible suffixes will remain always in use for hours with every rotation.
Privacy 100% broken. Great.
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#76There are a lot of comments here about how useless these protections are, because A or B already exist, or C works better for stalking. I think most of those comments are missing the real point here. If an Apple product were ever used to stalk - or God forbid, harm - an individual, it would be a big national story. If a Tile or a Samsung tag (or an amazon gps tracker made for stalking) were used in the same way, it w…
Would it really help, though? A stalker, not stupid and well-aware about the protection, visits iFixit for a picture of internals, takes a drill, and physically obliterates the buzzer, right through the case. Epoxy or superglue for protection from the elements. So they plant an Airtag, it gets found by accident, shit hits the fan, Apple's name goes in the news, journalists start journalist things, people don't are ou…
A less scrupulous competitor might even create a bunch of these and just plant them on random people. Instant scandal.
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#77All these stalking counter-measures make it useless if your device is stolen rather than mislaid. If my bag is stolen I want it to contain a hard to find device, not one that gives away its position (by warning the thief). I also want an easy mechanism to give the police temporary access to track it, til they catch the thief and get my stuff back.
I would think they would both not advertise these for locating stolen items as well as warn people not to retrieve items they suspect have been stolen.
Retrieving stolen items can be very dangerous, and Apple would want no liability from that.
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#78Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really comparing a device that costs hundreds of USD and has a form factor of... A phone, with a device that's supposed to be hooked up to a keychain and that costs 29 USD?
To be fair, it's easy to buy an old working iPhone on eBay for $30. And size is entirely irrelevant if you're putting it in someone's car. So I think the parent makes a point worthy of discussion. If Apple is providing this protection for Airtags, why aren't they providing it for all devices?
Well, "to be fair", a phone's battery would die in a few days. Airtags are supposed to last for a year.
Why work so hard to pretend these things are the same and therefore deserve to have the same protections applied when it is obvious with a few moments of thought that they are completely different things?
Re: Apple reveals more about AirTag stalking protections
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26878110
> The random ID has a fixed suffix in the spec, so you can infer that it’s the same AirTag if you see the same suffix across multiple rotations. So if that suffix is 8 or more bits, as soon as you have an airtag on your keys, wallet, and bag, you've become a nice easy to track person. If the suffix is less than 8 bits, then the 200 airtags around me in a classroom setting will always be falsely setting off the alert…
just spitballing here...
>So if that suffix is 8 or more bits, as soon as you have an airtag on your keys, wallet, and bag, you've become a nice easy to track person.
This can be easily solved by disabling the fixed bits if an "owned" device (eg. your iphone) is present. It prevents the anti-stalking feature from being used, but presumably if you can get a phone to follow the person you can probably get a GPS tracker to follow the person as well so that's not really a security risk.
>If the suffix is less than 8 bits, then the 200 airtags around me in a classroom setting will always be falsely setting off the alert - at least one of those 256 possible suffixes will remain always in use for hours with every rotation.
The phone can take the number of airtags that it sees into account. If it saw an airtag with the same suffix for the last 3 hours, but during that time it also saw 300 airtags, it's probably a false alarm. But if it only saw 10 airtags then that might warrant warning.