On 2/7/19 8:54 am, Antony Broughton Barry wrote:
This makes me uneasy. It is clever though.
https://tidbits.com/2019/06/21/how-apples-new-find-my-service-locates-missing-hardware-thats-offline/
> ... any Internet-connected Apple device running iOS 13 or macOS 10.15
Catalina can identify broadcasts from the Bluetooth adapter in other
Internet-offline Apple devices nearby and pass that information back to
Apple. This reporting works even when the missing Mac, iPhone, or iPad
is on standby or sleeping, though it can’t work for a device that’s
powered down, or if you have disabled Bluetooth or put your device into
Airplane Mode.
[That's a very good reason to keep Bluetooth disabled except in those
brief bursts when it's actually needed. But presumably that has to be
done manually, and assiduously, every time?]
>Apple’s trick in the new Find My service is to combine
always-available Bluetooth networking with the near ubiquity of other
people carrying Apple gear. The company adds a careful privacy
formulation on top of this so that only the owner of a lost device can
figure out where it is. Even Apple won’t be able to decode where a
specific device is located.
...
>Any Apple device running iOS 13 or Catalina will encrypt and report to
Apple its own location paired with a common one-way cryptographic
conversion (a “hash”) of the Bluetooth-transmitted public key for every
device in its vicinity. That hash can’t be reversed, so Apple won’t know
which public key was recorded, but any device with the original public
keys can perform the same one-way hash and create a match.
[So the announcement, the alpha, the beta, and v.1.0 will be trustworthy.
[And, once the PR gains have been made, and the user-base has accepted
the feature, and the chat has occurred with the spook agencies, some
modifications will be made to the design, right?]
--
Roger Clarke mailto:[email protected]
T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
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