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An interesting contrast is the story on the front page about Chinese border patrol installing spyware [1]. There, the fact that every app needs to be signed by

• ubersync 7y ago
  I am sure the chinese government can twist Apple's arm to sign their malware. So it is not any better.
  • ubersync 7y ago
    Lol, fanboys downvoting my comment, even though it is totally possible. Even my last comment 28 days ago, which was incidentally against Apple but factually true, was also downvoted. Looks like hacker news is being plagued with fanboys who can't take any valid criticism of their dear Apple Inc. Edit: when I wrote this comment, my original comment was at -4 points.
    • GoofballJones 7y ago
      It’s not the same. These are border guards easily putting spyware on Android phones, since it’s a feature of Android (to load programs). With iOS, you’d have to jailbreak it first, which isn’t a trivial thing to do “while you wait” at the border. That’s all.
      • ubersync 7y ago
        You don't need to jailbreak if you have an Apple signed App, which the Chinese Govt. can theoretically force Apple to provide.
        • arcticbull 7y ago
          Will you not see it on the launch screen? I mean, if you wanted a hidden, non-standard launchd type app, you'd have to modify the filesystem, install it, they'd need to create special tooling to do so, and modify the updaters to preserve it across an iOS update, etc. All without anyone at Apple speaking out. Apple refused to create an unlock tool for the US government that was a one-off, to create spyware for China seems like they last thing they'd do. Could they? I guess. Once detected - and it definitely would be (as this was), or leaked by employees - Apple would get bowled over by buyers and the stock market. It's just not in their interests. Their current business model is selling privacy.
        • GoofballJones 7y ago
          Then we need a story like this article confirming that do this too. So far the evidence points to “no”, but that isn’t enough. The transparency report from Apple needs to report this as well.
      • 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
        Apple is just gonna remotely ship it to you. You can't do business in China without bending over to government. If they want malware there then there will be one.
    • dang 7y ago
      Would you please read the site guidelines? They ask you not to post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html These biases are in the eye of the beholder. People with opposite feelings about Apple (or whatever the corp of the moment is) see exactly the opposite bias.
  • fiblye 7y ago
    I think if news of that got out, the US government would not be happy with one of their companies being complicit in signing Chinese malware. China gets away with a lot of stuff because companies can write it off to spies or other infiltration. Outright approval of it wouldn't go so well, especially after the Huawai affair.
  • simonh 7y ago
    It's not any better (stated as fact) because you hold an unsubstantiated opinion which so far is contradicted by actual reality. Today Android phones have this malware on them and iOS phones do not, so the actual facts in the real world are that iOS is free of this intrusion. That might change, but the situation now is what it is. This is why you are getting downvoted.
    • efdee 7y ago
      No offense, but the idea that "iOS is free of this intrusion" is your unsubstantiated opinion just as much. You don't know that for sure, do you?
      • simonh 7y ago
        So far only Android phones are reported as having the software installed on them by border guards. There are no reports of this being done to iPhones. Those are the facts.
        • yorwba 7y ago
          The company building the software also provides equivalents for other operating systems: https://mobile.twitter.com/0xdude/status/1146113174212661249?s=12 https://mobile.twitter.com/0xdude/status/1146113174212661249... We just don't have a sample to reverse-engineer yet.
        • skybrian 7y ago
          Well, they're facts about news reports. Always good to remember that what we know about what's going on in some other part of the world is what people tell us.
          • simonh 7y ago
            I understand that and I think the people downvoting do too. It doesn’t justify knowingly and explicitly stating something as a fact based only on speculation.
  • onetimemanytime 7y ago
    OK, I'll bite: How sure are you?
  • csomar 7y ago
    The US government failed to twist their arms. Very unlikely that China has a lot of power over them. Given how many people they employ in China, they might have actually power over China.
    • vanilla_nut 7y ago
      Conversely, they depend heavily on Chinese manufacturing -- for something like 70% of their production and also rely on Chinese markets for a significant portion of their profits. When Xi comes to Tim Cook with the options: "lose 70% of your manufacturing and 50% of your sales or let us install this app" it's not really an easy choice.
      • FrozenTuna 7y ago
        Oh there is, but its not one the proletariat on social media want to accept.
• dtech 7y ago
  On iOS this could also be done because they are forced to release the physical device and password/PIN. At that point they could jailbraik or install MDM. Or just dump all your browsing history, apps and email.
• tushar-r 7y ago
  From the article: "The iPhones are plugged into a reader that scans them, while Android phones have the app installed to do the same job." Yes, they cannot install an app, but that doesn't make your data secure from being taken.
  • acdha 7y ago
    That's a pretty big difference given that it's a point-in-time event versus needing to get a new phone to be certain it's not compromised.
  • ubermonkey 7y ago
    It's unclear how successful hardware hacking on a modern, updated iPhone can be at this point, isn't it?
• celticninja 7y ago
  Also it seems like they juyt havent figured out they can use a developer license to sign the app and install it on peoples iphones.
  • singularity2001 7y ago
    If Chinese guards abused such a developer license (which Apple could quickly revoke) could Apple also remotely invalidate/delete apps from affected customers? Could Google do this?
  • jmkni 7y ago
    They would need to register each iPhone as a developer device as well, right?
• aasasd 7y ago
  Makes me wonder if I can enable some ‘enterprise policy’ on Android that would require apps signed or otherwise validated by an ‘enterprise’ and the phone locked down for stranger apps.
  • bilbo0s 7y ago
    I see what you're trying to do, and I understand the security concerns leading you to do it. I think it's probably a good feature to have on phones like Android. At the same time though, what you're really doing is just sneaking closer and closer to an Apple style mobile-verse.
    • komali2 7y ago
      But what if the "Enterprise" was a server in your house?
    • mywittyname 7y ago
      >Apple style mobile-verse. I think the OP is looking to be the Apple in his Apple-style mobile-verse.
• mirimir 7y ago
  > also nobody can dictate what apps others can install That's one of the main reason why I don't use smartphones: I wouldn't be in control of my own device. With iOS, Apple is in control. With Android, apparently nobody is in control. But on my Linux machines, I'm arguably in control. If I can find stuff somewhere, I can install it. And nobody else can, unless they root them. It happens, I know. But with LUKS FDE, even booting is arguably hard unless they could read the key from RAM. So how come we got this smartphone crap, instead of actual portable computers that could, among other things, work as cellphones?
  • bilbo0s 7y ago
    >With iOS, Apple is in control. With Android, apparently nobody is in control... A thousand times this. The state of the mobile universe right now is such that you have to either effectively trust Apple, or you have to effectively trust everyone. That's why HN User qwerty456127's choice to go to Android was fine, if he wants to be able to install his own apps, but it seriously compromised his privacy and security. What if you do not want to trust anyone? Nope. Sorry. No easy to use options for you out there.
    • gph 7y ago
      >What if you do not want to trust anyone? >Nope. Sorry. No easy to use options for you out there. Sure but to an extent that's true about almost everything in modern society. If you don't want to have to trust those supplying you with food or water, there's really no easy options to completely supply yourself with either of those. And even with all the oversight and regulation there's still often good reasons not to fully trust (we all know about Flint at this point even if it was a bit overblown by the media) It's hard to imagine a situation where someone would supply you with something without you needing to trust them on some level.
      • mirimir 7y ago
        Sure, you're at the mercy of your food and water suppliers. But you have choice. There are numerous food sources. And many choices about water. Bottled water. Your own well, or rain water collection. And home-scale treatment systems, for metals and organics. That's very different from trusting only Apple. I mean, if you want to use Apple's equipment, you must also use their software. And perhaps we can trust their software. They also curate apps in their store, but sometimes they miss stuff. Given Apple's position vs the FBI, it seems pretty clear that they won't intentionally pwn their customers. But it's clear from TFA that they do remove apps when governments demand. Maybe that doesn't directly pwn users, but some of the apps that they've pulled could have protected users better than remaining alternatives. For example, I gather that it's impossible to build custom email or VPN apps in iOS. You can just build wrappers for Apple's stuff. For email, that apparently limits ability to securely encrypt messages.