3 ms·
A heap isn't needed, it is just super helpful. Also DFU is not the world's best protocol, I am surprised Apple didn't just roll their own. It isn't exactly har
by com2kid 7y ago
A heap isn't needed, it is just super helpful.
Also DFU is not the world's best protocol, I am surprised Apple didn't just roll their own. It isn't exactly hard to replace DFU with something simpler that gets the job done.
- nikanj 7y agoEither all the senior engineers and PhDs working for Apple are idiots, or it’s harder than you think. This same heuristic can be applied all across the HN front page with good results.
- mrmonkeyman 7y agoThe costs just outweigh the benefits. Nothing to do with idiot engineers or the task being hard. They could be idiots _and_ the task easy. Some things just don't need to be done.
- saagarjha 7y agoI'm sure the choice was made by a small team back when iPhone was still a carefully guarded secret inside the company, and it's stuck around since then.
- com2kid 7y ago> Either all the senior engineers and PhDs working for Apple are idiots, or it’s harder than you think. I was part of a team that rolled our own firmware update mechanism at Microsoft . (I didn't work on the replacement myself, the engineer sitting next to me did.) And deeply embedded USB stacks w/o a heap aren't exactly uncommon, considering malloc is forbidden in a large % of firmware.
- comex 7y agoNot the best, but not the worst. It's pretty simple as it is.
- sneak 7y agoIt's entirely possible that it was a "good enough for now" decision, and that the next bootrom will include additional hardening based on this attack. As has been well documented, while Apple the organization may have practically unlimited resources, specific teams within Apple do not, so a lot of stuff is sort of "if it ain't broke" mode until the CADT model kicks in and they do a total rewrite and close all the old bugs.