7 ms·
Tim Cook says employees who leak memos do not belong, according to leaked memo
- cblconfederate 5y agoa leaked memo about leaks ... there must be a joke here
- msis 5y agoIt would be amazing if this latest memo had different wordings per group of people. They search would be narrowed and they would have truly made an effort to track these leaks.
- joshstrange 5y agoThat reminds me of all the espionage and counter-espionage that (at least used to) occurred in EVE clans/guilds (not sure if that's the right word). They even had custom plugins for their messaging boards where they could use BBCode to offer multiple words and the forum software would present a different combo of words so that if someone copy/pasted it then they could narrow it down either right away or with a few examples. As in they would have 4+ words in an announcement that had multiple variants and would record "We showed User A the following 1:1, 2:3, 3:2, 4:3..." (variable-word-instance-index:variant-index).
- cschmittiey 5y agoIn Eve they’re called corporations/alliances, but it actually goes even deeper. More details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048674 Also, I can’t seem to find a source for it but there’s also a technique used where screenshots have the logged in user’s ID encoded in the background of the screenshot by using hex colors that effectively look the same.
- champtar 5y agoI remember one lyrics website alternating normal and non-breaking space to prove a competitor was just copy pasting from their website
- chuckee 5y agoThat competitor was Google, in case this is the incident you had in mind: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/genius-uses-morse-code-catch-google-stealing-lyrics/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/genius-uses-morse-co...
- atarian 5y agoThis is something Elon Musk was rumored to have done, but ended up backfiring: https://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/05/not-at-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-is-elon-musk-questioning/ https://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/05/not-at-all-quiet-on-the-...
- cnst 5y agoYeah, if you could just have VPs who know how things work, that would be great!
- runawaybottle 5y agoNext YC batch to include: leak-AB-ly: AB test your emails to see who is leaking. Secures 10m in funding, with a valuation of 10bn. Can’t make this shit up.
- MikeDelta 5y agoThat is called a canary trap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap
- perl4ever 5y agoRegarding the related technique, a "barium meal test", there is an xkcd: https://xkcd.com/525/ https://xkcd.com/525/
- randombits0 5y agoSecrets imply deception.
- beefok 5y agoSometimes secrets imply protecting IP and nothing nefarious.
- gdulli 5y agoDoes the same principle apply to us when we want privacy from Apple?
- lnxg33k1 5y agoYes, as for oppressive government around the world would consider deceptive the work of an activist, see united states' and WikiLeaks
- rowanG077 5y agoNo they don't. This is a very dangerous mentality at the root of a lot of evil done throughout the world.
- randombits0 5y agoDo you believe the hunt for leakers within Apple should be secret?
- perl4ever 5y agoIf secrets don't imply deception, that that seems to me like saying knowledge is useless. All truths or falsehoods are within some context and cannot be divorced from context. What does this have to do with "danger" or "evil"?
- rowanG077 5y agoNo it's not. For example almost everyone has curtains. Do you think everyone that closes their curtains is deceiving someone? Of course not. There are many reasons to keep something private, one of them beeing deception. But it's far from the only one.
- sharken 5y agoI hope someone leaks the memo saying on-device scanning will be implemented. But i hope Apple is clever enough to walk away from that feature for good.
- tssva 5y ago"We’ll continue to measure our contributions in the lives we change, the connections we foster, and the work we do to leave the world a better place." Maybe someone can leak the work they do to leave the world a better place because they have been real good at keeping that secret.
- jjtheblunt 5y agoIt would be funny if you'd typed that on an Apple product, to connect with others.
- geofft 5y agoThe fact that you're re-enacting https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ aside, the comment was about the clause about making the world a better place, not the clause about fostering connections. (And even for that clause, if the extent of fostering is that they have a web browser based on Konqueror and a network stack based on BSD that lets you connect to Hacker News, it's not clear how much credit should be ascribed to Apple for it.)
- jjtheblunt 5y agoyep
- jjtheblunt 5y agodownvotes for noticing the irony, and saying yep it was a joke?
- tssva 5y agoIt was typed on a Lenovo Thinkpad.
- poetaster 5y agoI think that is a reference to amateur photography.
- 5y ago
- mbfg 5y agoi'm guessing the double "were were" in the second paragraph is one of many things in there by which they segregate the employees to determine who sent the email.
- _nalply 5y agoYeah. I remember reading somewhere text steganography being used not to encode a hidden message but to identify recipients who might leak the text. One way is to introduce small mistakes or differences like "were were" but differently for each recipient. One might get "were were" and someone else might get "the the", a third one might get a superfluous comma, etc., even harmless differences which are not mistakes are possible. One possible difference corresponds to a bit of information. If you have one hundred possible differences, you have one hundred bit of identificating information. But I am sure that it is possible to work around this. Just don't give the exact memo text to the public. Paraphrase the text. I am afraid copy-edit or some intentional changes won't be enough if you don't paraphrase the text. Dangerous and prone to mistakes but surely lucrative or satisfying for the leaker.
- knotAUsername 5y agoToo dangerous. What if every department gets a different phrase? Those people would probably do something like innocuously forward it to other departments. Reply to your version of the memo, but respond to the entire design and sales teams. Something like "What a great memo by Tim Cook!"
- _nalply 5y agoYeah. I could imagine that steganography is only one part of the puzzle who is the impostor. Perhaps Apple has a secret departement dedicated to identify leakers. If they found someone they strongly suspect they lay out a trap, for example by only sending him confidential information. And, if someone innocuously forwards a memo, they have the electronic paper trail of that. Spionage, counter-spionage and counter-counter-spionage. Apple is waging a war.
- robertheadley 5y agoGreat headline by Zoe Schiffer
- lnxg33k1 5y agoThese are not companies are a cult ffs
- Borrible 5y agoSo, in case Cook leaked that memo about employees who leaked memos and therefore do not belong, to find employees who leak memos, does he belong?
- _nalply 5y agoI wonder if the game Among Us took its inspiration from Apple.