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How does Apple privately find offline devices?

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#91

Post by abakker »

Phlarp wrote: post #75
crazygringo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's amazing, so cool. Is that something Google's not doing with the data, but could? (E.g. they don't because their maps don't show most houses precisely enough or whatever, so it wouldn't be useful?) Or is it relying on the fact that you are triangulating or similar from the known exact position of your WiFi routers or similar down to the inch, and Google doesn't have any way of knowing that?

Or they do and have internally assessed that it would be too creepy to provide to users, but are happily using it to better target advertising.

Do you get toilet paper ads when browsing in the restroom?

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#92

Post by president »

kccqzy wrote: post #80
crazygringo wrote: post #74

Can this be used as essentially 100% effective anti-theft? If an Apple device is constantly emitting a BLE beacon code that can't effectively be changed in any way by a thief... ...then unless a thief keeps the device in their basement and never has anybody visit, your stolen device will almost certainly be detected sooner or later, and then you just call the police? Even if the thief has sold it by that point and di…

Thieves already know that stolen iPhones are usually not operable. Even with the old Find My iPhone, even after the device has been wiped, only the original owner can activate it again. So these stolen phones are usually broken down, with parts sold separately.

They are getting smarter. A family member had their phone stolen and Find My iPhone reported that the phone was off for months and so she gave up searching. One day, she got a text on her new phone saying "Find my iPhone has found your phone, click here to login to Find my iPhone". It turned out to be a phishing page for her AppleID credentials. She fell for it and I'm assuming the thieves were able to finally get into her phone. To this day I have no idea how they were able to get her phone number. From the SIM maybe?

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#93

Post by ryanmarsh »

randyrand wrote: post #56
imhoguy wrote: post #13

I see lots of poor Lassies in airports, conferencies and generally in crowded places. Not even mentioning flood or replay attacks. Lassie's help needs to have some limits otherwise it may quickly drain batteries or mobile plans especially in roaming.

"Apple's recommended setting of 100 ms advertising interval with a coin cell battery provides for 1–3 months of life, which increases to 2–3 years as advertising interval is increased to 900 ms." iPhone's have about at 10X larger batter than that. So iPhones can do this for ~20-30 years if configured correctly.

If I'm not mistaken the normal self-discharge rate for a phone's lithium ion battery will exceed the maintenance of BLE advertisement.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#94

Post by ars »

Fnoord wrote: post #19
Slippery_John wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of several scenarios: * I lost the phone hiking somewhere with no signal * I lost the phone / it was stolen while in airplane mode * I lost the phone while traveling abroad without any local service This finding service will work for wifi-only ipads, wifi-only apple watches, and macbooks in addition to the likely tracking tokens.

Stolen while in airplane mode, and you're going to rely on BLE? A "good" thief would learn that he'd need to carry around a Faraday cage (read: some tinfoil) to block the signals. The only disadvantage is that the act of putting tinfoil around an iPhone then becomes suspicious.

> (read: some tinfoil)

Try it. Wrap your phone in tinfoil then call it. It will still ring.

It's harder than it looks to make a Faraday cage.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#95

Post by Phlarp »

HALtheWise wrote: post #89
Phlarp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they do and have internally assessed that it would be too creepy to provide to users, but are happily using it to better target advertising.

Or they have decided that it's too creepy to use at all, so they don't use it for targeted advertising. Seriously, why does everyone assume that companies are evilly cackling in volcano lairs? They know that violating user trust is really expensive and a bad idea. By the way, I'm pretty sure I've seen that Google's advertising targeting is only allowed to use "neighborhood level" location, which is designed to be coa…

Because time and time again it is proven that "these companies" (Facebook and Google) will use any signal they can get their hands on to make money?

I'm pretty sure they've both been caught with their hands in the cookie jar doing things they swore they never would.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#96

Post by m0dest »

Uehreka wrote: post #8
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #6

The problem I see with this is that your phone always has to be broadcasting the BLE beacon, regardless of if it is lost or not. Otherwise it could randomly end up lost in a place with poor/no service... and would never be found For phones, how often is this really an issue? Sure, this is useful for the Tile type "dumb" devices... but if my phone has no cell or data service... it's probably because the battery is dea…

Some people have hypothesized that this isn't necessarily for finding phones. This might be about using phones (and iPads, Apple Watches, MacBooks, etc.) to create a network like the one used by the Tile product for finding wallets, keys, etc. This could be a product Apple unveils in September.

This is for tracking lost MacBooks. Apple said this at the keynote. They may expand it beyond laptops, but that's the initial scenario. (It's a great one.)

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#97

Post by matt-attack »

kelnos wrote: post #83
crazygringo wrote: post #74

Can this be used as essentially 100% effective anti-theft? If an Apple device is constantly emitting a BLE beacon code that can't effectively be changed in any way by a thief... ...then unless a thief keeps the device in their basement and never has anybody visit, your stolen device will almost certainly be detected sooner or later, and then you just call the police? Even if the thief has sold it by that point and di…

I would assume that a factory reset would take care of it. Otherwise you couldn't sell the phone to someone else and revoke your ability to find it.

You have to do a full iCloud logout which involves your iCloud password in order to disassociate a device from your Find My Phone. It's actually quite involved.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#98

Post by jakejarvis »

president wrote: post #92
kccqzy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thieves already know that stolen iPhones are usually not operable. Even with the old Find My iPhone, even after the device has been wiped, only the original owner can activate it again. So these stolen phones are usually broken down, with parts sold separately.

They are getting smarter. A family member had their phone stolen and Find My iPhone reported that the phone was off for months and so she gave up searching. One day, she got a text on her new phone saying "Find my iPhone has found your phone, click here to login to Find my iPhone". It turned out to be a phishing page for her AppleID credentials. She fell for it and I'm assuming the thieves were able to finally get in…

Similar story here, but instead of a phishing email it was a legit Find My iPhone email six months later saying her phone pinged from Morocco.

So yup, sounds like they’ve either resorted to stripping them for parts or selling them whole (and still firmware-locked) to innocent buyers in places where you’d have practically no legal recourse — who then become victims to the theft as well, ironically. And by then, of course, you’ve likely had a new phone for long enough to not lose much sleep over it.

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#99

Post by kevas »

m463 wrote: post #57
Xylakant wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that going to work? All communication that you initiate must be active. The only passive option would be broadcasts like TV or radio stations, but that’s not particularly useful if you want to view a specific website.

I meant, don't turn your phone into a beacon. (as a setting is ok) The idea would be yes -- connect to bluetooth headphones or your car. Connect to wifi in your home. Allow NFC transactions on command. But no, don't promiscuously advertise your device. Don't look up every bluetooth beacon you encounter or crowdsource every wifi access point.

If your WiFi is on, it’s already doing this. It’s saying, here’s all the networks I’ve joined in the past. Are you one?

Re: How does Apple privately find offline devices?

#100

Post by inetknght »

HALtheWise wrote: post #89
Phlarp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they do and have internally assessed that it would be too creepy to provide to users, but are happily using it to better target advertising.

Or they have decided that it's too creepy to use at all, so they don't use it for targeted advertising. Seriously, why does everyone assume that companies are evilly cackling in volcano lairs? They know that violating user trust is really expensive and a bad idea. By the way, I'm pretty sure I've seen that Google's advertising targeting is only allowed to use "neighborhood level" location, which is designed to be coa…

On the other hand, if the information is aggregated to a final answer, why is the data then kept? What if the _wrong people_ get ahold of the more sensitive information _because_ the data was kept beyond its useful life?
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