8 ms·

Make sure to update to 9.3.5 on all of your iOS devices ASAP!

acomjean 10y ago
"iOS 9.3.5 provides an important security update for your iPhone and is recommended for all users" I can't help but think at this point we've totally lost control of our devices..
- lostlogin 10y ago
  One upside of this is that a large percentage of devices are up to date. It's quite a contrast to other platforms (mobile or otherwise). Just how benign is big brother though?
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  This happened the moment you bought an iPhone. Not that Android is much better: Apple (and to a certain extent, previous feature phone manufacturers) set the stage for treating consumers as too dumb to use their phones as they like, and the rest of the smartphone arena happily followed suit. There's never been a point in time where I was satisfied with the heavy constraints placed on users by smartphone OS makers. And I'm not approaching this from a Stallmanesque, philosophical perspective, but a plain old ease-of-use one.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  I don't get the point you're trying to make here. We've lost control because there's a serious vulnerability? We've lost control because Apple can patch the OS?
  - acomjean 10y ago
    Well its sort of a general thing. We can't even control what runs on our devices and they run so fast you might not even notice something new running. Also stopping hacker from getting in remotely is hard for 24/7 connected devices. Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing. The OS is actually very complex and you could insert another process and it can go and send stuff out and it would be hard to notice. I was also thinking in context of Windows 10 sending out who knows what all the time ( I don't use windows, but I think they called telemetry..). In the past when everything wasn't connected together and the connections were slower this wasn't as much of an issue. Although that does allow us to patch quickly and easily. Apple sees to it you'll be hounded till you update.. Its doesn't seem easy to fix. Maybe safer languages will lead to less hackable code.
    - toyg 10y ago
      > Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing. That's been the case pretty much since Windows 2000 (or even 98). > In the past when everything wasn't connected together and the connections were slower this wasn't as much of an issue Viruses were really bad even when everything was pretty much airgapped. They were not vectors for state-level attacks only because of cultural elements (you weren't walking with an exploitable beacon in your pocket; there was little value in exploiting what were basically glorified typewriters; and established interests weren't taking this sort of thing particularly seriously outside of the US). > Maybe safer languages will lead to less hackable code. JavaScript is fairly safe: it runs in a VM, right? Guess what was used to persist this exploit across reboots... I don't think this is something that we can "fix" at all. Door locks are ridiculously ineffective and exploitable, but very few people feel the need to use anything different. Similarly, computing devices will always be exploitable one way or the other, but people will keep using them; what we can do is to limit the surface attack as much as possible, and to avoid placing everything online (hello, IoT!) just for the hell of it.
    - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
      Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing. I don't run Linux so I can't comment on that one, but surely there are "simple" Linux distributions that don't start countless unrecognizable processes? Mac is a hopeless case; a veritable plethora of inexplicable processes. In contrast, I just logged in to my OpenBSD firewall. I was able to easily recognize everything that was running. The OpenBSD startup procedure is very simple to understand. It's easy to know exactly what processes are started and why. tl;dr: horses for courses
emptybits 10y ago
Sad face. Right now, on my iPhone: "iOS 9.3.5 provides an important security update for your iPhone" 40.5 MB. Great! Tapped "Download and install". It's greyed out. Huh? Oh, "this important security update requires a Wi-Fi network connection to download". Really? It's only 40.5 MB. Let me decide, please, how I use my data. Am I missing a setting that allows me to install an important security update on a network of my choosing?
- 0x0 10y ago
  Yeah, apple needs to fix this. They have been bumping the max app size for non-wifi downloads throughout the years from 10mb to 100mb, but they haven't kept up for the actual security updates. For extra hilarity, if you have two iphones available, you can use the personal hotspot feature between them and install the updates even though it's all 3g/4g anyways.
- acdha 10y ago
  Go to https://bugreport.apple.com https://bugreport.apple.com and request that. The more duplicates they get, the more likely something is to get fixed.
  - emptybits 10y ago
    Good call. Done. Also cathartic.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  You have to wonder how many iPhones never see a WiFi connection.
  - Aissen 10y ago
    Put your SIM card in another (i)phone, make a personal hotspot, update. If you don't have another phone, use a friends' phone and/or data that shares an access point. If you don't have a SIM card, move to a country where they protect consumer rights, so you can change phone without asking your carrier. (yes, I realize how silly all of this sounds :-))

"iOS 9.3.5 provides an important security update for your iPhone and is recommended for all users" I can't help but think at this point we've totally lost control of our devices..

lostlogin 10y ago
One upside of this is that a large percentage of devices are up to date. It's quite a contrast to other platforms (mobile or otherwise). Just how benign is big brother though?
wutbrodo 10y ago
This happened the moment you bought an iPhone. Not that Android is much better: Apple (and to a certain extent, previous feature phone manufacturers) set the stage for treating consumers as too dumb to use their phones as they like, and the rest of the smartphone arena happily followed suit. There's never been a point in time where I was satisfied with the heavy constraints placed on users by smartphone OS makers. And I'm not approaching this from a Stallmanesque, philosophical perspective, but a plain old ease-of-use one.
snowwrestler 10y ago
I don't get the point you're trying to make here. We've lost control because there's a serious vulnerability? We've lost control because Apple can patch the OS?
- acomjean 10y ago
  Well its sort of a general thing. We can't even control what runs on our devices and they run so fast you might not even notice something new running. Also stopping hacker from getting in remotely is hard for 24/7 connected devices. Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing. The OS is actually very complex and you could insert another process and it can go and send stuff out and it would be hard to notice. I was also thinking in context of Windows 10 sending out who knows what all the time ( I don't use windows, but I think they called telemetry..). In the past when everything wasn't connected together and the connections were slower this wasn't as much of an issue. Although that does allow us to patch quickly and easily. Apple sees to it you'll be hounded till you update.. Its doesn't seem easy to fix. Maybe safer languages will lead to less hackable code.
  - toyg 10y ago
    > Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing. That's been the case pretty much since Windows 2000 (or even 98). > In the past when everything wasn't connected together and the connections were slower this wasn't as much of an issue Viruses were really bad even when everything was pretty much airgapped. They were not vectors for state-level attacks only because of cultural elements (you weren't walking with an exploitable beacon in your pocket; there was little value in exploiting what were basically glorified typewriters; and established interests weren't taking this sort of thing particularly seriously outside of the US). > Maybe safer languages will lead to less hackable code. JavaScript is fairly safe: it runs in a VM, right? Guess what was used to persist this exploit across reboots... I don't think this is something that we can "fix" at all. Door locks are ridiculously ineffective and exploitable, but very few people feel the need to use anything different. Similarly, computing devices will always be exploitable one way or the other, but people will keep using them; what we can do is to limit the surface attack as much as possible, and to avoid placing everything online (hello, IoT!) just for the hell of it.
  - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing. I don't run Linux so I can't comment on that one, but surely there are "simple" Linux distributions that don't start countless unrecognizable processes? Mac is a hopeless case; a veritable plethora of inexplicable processes. In contrast, I just logged in to my OpenBSD firewall. I was able to easily recognize everything that was running. The OpenBSD startup procedure is very simple to understand. It's easy to know exactly what processes are started and why. tl;dr: horses for courses

emptybits 10y ago

Sad face. Right now, on my iPhone: "iOS 9.3.5 provides an important security update for your iPhone" 40.5 MB. Great! Tapped "Download and install". It's greyed out. Huh? Oh, "this important security update requires a Wi-Fi network connection to download". Really? It's only 40.5 MB. Let me decide, please, how I use my data. Am I missing a setting that allows me to install an important security update on a network of my choosing?

0x0 10y ago
Yeah, apple needs to fix this. They have been bumping the max app size for non-wifi downloads throughout the years from 10mb to 100mb, but they haven't kept up for the actual security updates. For extra hilarity, if you have two iphones available, you can use the personal hotspot feature between them and install the updates even though it's all 3g/4g anyways.
acdha 10y ago
Go to https://bugreport.apple.com https://bugreport.apple.com and request that. The more duplicates they get, the more likely something is to get fixed.
- emptybits 10y ago
  Good call. Done. Also cathartic.
CamperBob2 10y ago
You have to wonder how many iPhones never see a WiFi connection.
- Aissen 10y ago
  Put your SIM card in another (i)phone, make a personal hotspot, update. If you don't have another phone, use a friends' phone and/or data that shares an access point. If you don't have a SIM card, move to a country where they protect consumer rights, so you can change phone without asking your carrier. (yes, I realize how silly all of this sounds :-))