It seems like the fact that relying on fingerprint scanning makes that even a possibility, makes it an insanely stupid design decision from a security standpoint. Why the fuck would anyone want a completely unchangeable password that they have literally written on their fingertips (and any surface they touch) at all times?
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Because prior to that lots of people were using four digit numbers which are even worse (or even worse than that, those swipe a shape things). Ideally weâd want a more sophisticated multi-factor auth mechanism, but these are human interfaces, and very few humans are walking IT specialists.
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Iâve had decent success at deriving patterns from the swipey thing just by looking at smudges. Or simply watching them.
But this whole thing is playing out like a psychotic break at Apple. Like there are infosec pros that have to be hardcore, and engineers that have to deliver features. So they go, âwhy not both?â. And thatâs what causes the shit to hit the fan.
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If thatâs all you do, then absolutely! Unfortunately theyâre all crap for security anyway because the radios arenât sandboxed and the radio firmware is all shite. So if a TLA is after you then fuggedaboutit, youâre done. At some point the less savory elements will figure out that reprogramming the radios to attack other radios is actually more effective than the wireless route. Give it a year or three.
(Of course by then the AIs will have voice samples from us all plus all our personal info and will be doing the Eliza thing to our banks, in our voices, with our caller ID and then weâll all have to start going back to talking to a real teller irl, f2f!)
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Yeah, those shape-swipe things are usually reversible via smudge (and shoulder-surfing helps for those or many other mechanisms.)
Shipping a viable consumer product in large quantities at a price point as low as manageable that has end-user usability requirements but with some reasonable level of security is a massive tug-of-war of goals and requirements. Trade-offs will be made. Some people will whinge about any trade-off. The people saying âoh no, you can get someoneâs fingerprintâ are fantasizing about spy movies and not considering the productâs goals, use, or real-world requirements.
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It is a pain in the rear, and a big reason I wonât go back to consumer product development. I canât imagine someone who wonât cli or script themselves out of a problem, let alone appreciate measures and countermeasures when it comes to security.
I would be a liability at Apple. (Unless I was in their internal infosec dept)
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The InfoSec teams at Apple I worked with actually had a pretty cool gig (though not an easy one). Every app, internal or external, has to be pentested and also go through a code audit. The code reviews were not fun, but I learned a few cool and interesting things going through reviews of various tools with InfoSec people. Theyâre always really, really busy, though and since they are doing code audits they need to be hopping around between a lot of languages (fun for some, but not all).
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On an unrelated note, check this infosec madness out:
https://www.shodan.io/host/198.2.49.105
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HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!
that took me a second to figure out what was going on, but holy hell.
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Heh, should I drive down and say hello with a bottle Chablis and some electrical tape for the camera?
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Which turned out to be a really terrible idea. Why not just have the user enter their back-up password?
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I continue to not understand why people give Apple money. Still, this is a class action waiting to happen.
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Wait a minnit!
He had to pay ÂŁ270 for a replacement and is furious.
What a goddamn idiot.
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Internal dialog when I first saw that went something like, âHmm, whatâs this? Wait⌠Is that a? OMFG! Jesus H! What The Living Hell!?!â
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Thatâs because Android is a shit OS and not secure as well.
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Part of that problem is that Android doesnât let you retrace your path - if you could you could create much more complex patterns that would be harder to derive from the smudges.
Amusing! They seem to have realized the error of their ways though, or maybe the IP changed. It still responds to 80/443 but thereâs no content, (and Iâm not going to scan for whatever random port they might have switched it to).
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I wouldnât say Android is a shit os at all. Well, not after using the last twenty years of operating systems. But the observation that it has a looong way to go I completely agree with.
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They made it to the front page of Hacker News a few days ago, so I have a feeling theyâve made some recent adjustments (or had some made for them.)
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Usability: low
QA quality: low
App store app quality: a joke (with an advertising banner)
If you root your Android phone, youâre halfway to being owned by some .apk file you download and then let take over your phone.
iOS has problems but at least I donât have to worry about an app store app taking over my phone without using an actual unpatched zero day (and since Apple ships its own updates directly to users, unlike 99% of Android phones, I get security updates quickly).
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