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You think it takes 100 hours every time Apple releases a new iOS version just to sign it? They used to do something similar with unencrypted devices, according

by ikeboy 11y ago

You think it takes 100 hours every time Apple releases a new iOS version just to sign it? They used to do something similar with unencrypted devices, according to https://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/17/apple-can-comply-with-the-fbi-court-order/ https://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/17/apple-can-comply-wit... >Ohhh, so you're arguing a private company should hand over all of it's private property (it's source code) to a public institution because... terrorists?! I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that if Apple claims it's too hard to comply, there's a much easier method. It's to Apple's benefit that they're given the option to make the software and sign it themselves. This isn't my original argument, I took it from http://bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-17/the-apple-fight-isn-t-about-encryption http://bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-17/the-apple-fight...

danielsju6 11y ago
Yep, that's what I'm arguing. The SHSH blob servers probably aren't trivial + I'm certain they have a lot of process in place to keep someone from "accidentally" releasing a software update, or the release of iOS 9.3 from taking them all down. You'd be talking about creating both a special version of the OS and updating the SHSH servers to accept that code signature. What are they gonna do, just hardcode the device's UDID in a sub-routine and distribute it to the entire cluster? What about testing? If they do it wrong and the SHSH blob/update gets in a bad state, they could end up accidentally wiping the phone... so now QE needs to get involved + build test cases. I'd just spitball a 20 person team with at least nine months, lots of meetings w/leadership/pm/and VPs, hardware being purchased, and several executives having to get involved. Hell, it takes more than 100 engineering hours at my company just to update some chef cookbooks; let alone schedule a release and get sign off. I'm guessing you haven't worked at a large company before? ---- They probably did something very different than custom firmware before.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  It's trivial to redirect a network to ask your own server instead of Apple's. That's what tinyumbrella did while it still worked. So they wouldn't need to change those clusters, just set up a single machine signing only that device (which is easy enough that tinyumbrella did it without Apple's help), and give it access to Apple's signing key. >If they do it wrong and the SHSH blob/update gets in a bad state, they could end up accidentally wiping the phone How many hours does it take to test on a spare phone? 5? >I'm guessing you haven't worked at a large company before? No. But this isn't something that's being rolled out to millions of users. The team doesn't need to do anything that affects other users. They can have their own SHSH server offline, and sign everything offline.

by ikeboy 11y ago

danielsju6 11y ago

Yep, that's what I'm arguing. The SHSH blob servers probably aren't trivial + I'm certain they have a lot of process in place to keep someone from "accidentally" releasing a software update, or the release of iOS 9.3 from taking them all down. You'd be talking about creating both a special version of the OS and updating the SHSH servers to accept that code signature. What are they gonna do, just hardcode the device's UDID in a sub-routine and distribute it to the entire cluster? What about testing? If they do it wrong and the SHSH blob/update gets in a bad state, they could end up accidentally wiping the phone... so now QE needs to get involved + build test cases. I'd just spitball a 20 person team with at least nine months, lots of meetings w/leadership/pm/and VPs, hardware being purchased, and several executives having to get involved. Hell, it takes more than 100 engineering hours at my company just to update some chef cookbooks; let alone schedule a release and get sign off. I'm guessing you haven't worked at a large company before? ---- They probably did something very different than custom firmware before.

ikeboy 11y ago
It's trivial to redirect a network to ask your own server instead of Apple's. That's what tinyumbrella did while it still worked. So they wouldn't need to change those clusters, just set up a single machine signing only that device (which is easy enough that tinyumbrella did it without Apple's help), and give it access to Apple's signing key. >If they do it wrong and the SHSH blob/update gets in a bad state, they could end up accidentally wiping the phone How many hours does it take to test on a spare phone? 5? >I'm guessing you haven't worked at a large company before? No. But this isn't something that's being rolled out to millions of users. The team doesn't need to do anything that affects other users. They can have their own SHSH server offline, and sign everything offline.