Comment on China claims it has cracked Apple Airdrop’s encryption to identify senders | CNN Business
Vub@lemmy.world 10 months ago
So don’t go to China and if you do don’t send any important but unencrypted files via short-distance signal from one iPhone to another iPhone, gotcha.
Apple disabled AirDrop in the China region, then later globally, for people not in your contacts.
In November 2022, […] Apple began to limit AirDrop sharing with non-contacts for devices in China, which made it harder for users to share files with people they didn’t know. That feature was later expanded globally.
Correct, reviving files from everyone is now only open for 10 min. It was launched in China to appease the CCP, but in western nations where using airdrop to voice government dissent isn’t popular, it was released to stop people from airdropping dick pics on the subway.
airdropping dick pics in the subway 😆 Imagine the analog version of this… Dudes leaving random dick polaroids…
I don’t have to imagine it. I’ve clocked in hours on BART. It’s just dudes whipping it out.
people would airdrop around weapons and stuff at my school which almost always ended with a lockdown
Thing is, the actual airdrop file transfer should be gated behind a 2048-bit RSA hash.
I’m curious to see what the security vulnerability is and how long it will remain open. China has been thirsting to find one for years.
I haven’t read anything about cracking the data itself though, just being able to identify the phone number of a sender. The infos they give is just too vague at this point.
jonne@infosec.pub 10 months ago
AirDrop has been used in China by pro-democracy activists to spread their message relatively safely (as you can’t get away with that using the internet). Apple has already made AirDrop useless for that purpose in a recent update, but I guess China is still working on cracking down on it.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You can still use airdrop to send shit to people about how much the CCP sucks. Airdropping to non-contacts still exists, but when you enable receiving from any rando, that door only remains open for 10 minutes, then you have to open it again.
I guess the question is, do Chinese people keep tapping “everyone for 10 minutes” multiple times in certain public places?
jonne@infosec.pub 10 months ago
That’s what I meant as it being useless now for that purpose. Unless there’s designated dissent areas or times, that strategy just won’t work any more (and if you have to be ‘in the know’ to enable it, you’re not recruiting/convincing any new people).
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I curious why China still cares about it. It seems like it would be hard for to spread info around on it now.
That said, if they still care about it, there must be some sort of use case that scares them.