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Did anyone else say "your sign looks like you spent $1 on it, you're keeping the devices insecurely out on a bench, and this whole setup doesn't inspire confide
by LegitShady 4y ago
Did anyone else say "your sign looks like you spent $1 on it, you're keeping the devices insecurely out on a bench, and this whole setup doesn't inspire confidence and is sketchy af?"
- peterangular 4y agoI see you're getting downvoted (gray comment) but I'll jump aboard the unpopular opinion here: There is exactly zero chance I'd be leaving my device with these people. Trusting your phone to strangers when you can just silence it and leave it in your pocket is a fool's errand - this whole thing is just silly. It's unnecessary risk - everything from auth, to payments, to my career is piped through this device. Leaving it with absolute strangers is leaving someone with my most significant and risk-prone tool that I own. Sorry to be pedantic but common folks - let's use some common sense here. This is so silly.
- chatmasta 4y agoHave you ever given your car keys to a valet?
- xapata 4y agoYou're implying that car-theft would be equally as bad or worse than phone-theft. I'm not sure that's true for everyone. Further, stealing a car may be more difficult than stealing a phone.
- peterangular 4y agoThis. I'd rather my vehicle was stolen vs or damaged vs getting digitally compromised. The damage someone could cause with my phone vs. stealing my car is vastly different.
- chatmasta 4y agoHow insecure is your phone that someone can digitally compromise you without knowing the passcode? If you lock a modern iPhone, even the FBI will have trouble extracting any content from it.
- peterangular 4y agoHey - we're not going to see eye to eye on this one. Respectfully, I'm not going to to respond further. Cheers.
- chatmasta 4y agolol, ok. Keep an eye on your phone!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoFor years, phone forensics firms pretty much consistently had non-public exploits that would allow compromising even locked phones. As recently as 2019, Cellebrite publicly claimed that they can attack any iPhone with up to date software: https://www.wired.com/story/cellebrite-ufed-ios-12-iphone-hack-android/ https://www.wired.com/story/cellebrite-ufed-ios-12-iphone-ha... And those are publicly known capabilities. You should assume that potential adversaries will have more than that. Am I certain that such exploits are known for the very most recent iPhone/iOS? No. But it would still be foolish to bet on them not being known.
- Izkata 4y agoAlso low-tech exploits, like holding the screen at an angle to the light, to see finger smudges for the unlock pattern.
- Johnny555 4y agoFurther, stealing a car may be more difficult than stealing a phone Stealing it may be more difficult, but it's much easier to lose a phone than a car. I've never lost my car, but I've lost 2 phones (I got one of them back).
- peterangular 4y agoSure, but I think it's a bad faith argument to draw a comparison between such vastly different situations. Is my car my phone? No, no it is not.
- ganoushoreilly 4y agoSure, but this is a false equivalency. A car and phone are completely different issues. Cars also have “valet modes to lock things down”.
- chatmasta 4y agoSo do modern phones. A locked iPhone is more secure than most cars, in terms of the ability for anyone to break into it.
- throwaway675309 4y agoThere are more types of phones than just iPhones, and there have been enough high profile incidences of zero day exploits that allow you to exfiltrate data from a locked phone to give a reasonably security conscious person pause to just hand over their phone to a stranger. Even if you think of the people you're giving the phone to are trust worthy there's just no good goddamn reason to risk it.
- fwlr 4y agoYes, but not before removing my wallet and passport and briefcase that has all my logins to my business’s internet banking written down on a sheet of paper inside.
- chatmasta 4y agoWhy is locking your phone not sufficient to secure its contents?
- fwlr 4y agoObviously it would be worse if the valet started using my wallet and passport and business banking to steal from me, but it would still suck if they merely threw it all out the window.
- chatmasta 4y agoYou lost me with this analogy. Is the thief wiping the contents of your phone? This sounds like you need to improve your backup and recovery system... what if you lose your phone, or drop it in the toilet?
- fwlr 4y agoTo be concrete, the concern isn’t that the phone check people are going to steal important data from my phone, it’s that they are going to lose my phone. I have backup and recovery systems but they are not seamless and not complete, something would probably get lost.
- DANmode 4y agoChiming in to say this is not an unreasonable standpoint. It's not that you're likely to be victimized in this particular venue. It's that you should practice good habits if your device has, or ever will have, access or exposure to information you or your company would be damaged by if stolen.
- eldritch_4ier 4y agoThis was a YC event that was for YC founders from the current batch only, not just random people who like YC.
- peterangular 4y agoMy phone is safer in my custody - it doesn't matter who I am giving it to, including YC founders/staff. Giving my phone to other people, regardless of who those people are, is an extraneous risk when compared to having it in my pocket on silent. I'm sorry - but this is just bad personal opsec regardless of what event you're attending, or who you're rubbing elbows with. Sorry, but my opinion on this is different than yours.
- CapstanRoller 4y agoSo it's full of high-profile targets? Cool.
- dymk 4y agoAre you worried y-combinator people might steal a phone…?
- peterangular 4y agoYes.
- Kwpolska 4y agoWhat makes YCombinator people special? Why should they be more trustworthy?
- corndoge 4y agoThey are rich!
- xapata 4y agoMany of them are not (yet?).
- nfw2 4y agoThey all just got half a million in funding. That may not meet your definition of “rich”, but it at least makes the economics of stealing a $500 phone pretty silly
- LegitShady 4y agotheir business got half a million in funding. I don't know what their bank account looks like.
- xapata 4y agoMost of that is to pay employees. And to rent hardware, perhaps.
- CapstanRoller 4y ago>the economics of stealing a $500 phone OK. A typical key costs, what, $1? Would you hand me all your keys? You can trust me. The economics of stealing some cheap pieces of metal are pretty silly.
- el_benhameen 4y agoI thought the same, but I think everyone involved knows each other as it seems they’re all part of a yc batch.
- LegitShady 4y agothey're sitting on a bench right behind him. One could fall off and get smashed. a third party could steal them. the fire alarm could go off and then what would they do? It's just a dumb way to run this, if this is what you want to do. The amazing part is that they found so many people willing.
- peterangular 4y ago> The amazing part is that they found so many people willing. Honestly it doesn't surprise me that much. People who tend to end up in these opportunities have incredibly privileged lives that allowed them to arrive at such an event/opportunity. With those privileged lives they can be quite insulated from stuff like theft, security, etc. Just because someone's privileged, or rich, or a founder, or hell even technical... doesn't mean they have common sense. Handing custody of your phone over for no reason other than a "social experience" is just evidence of how they're out-of-touch from normal life/security practices.
- hamburglar 4y agoAgreed wholeheartedly. I would have refused not because I don’t trust the guys (the context of being a ycombinator founder event would give me a lot of confidence), but because it’s clear they aren’t really doing anything to safeguard the phones very well. Looks to me like it’s ripe for someone pulling a social engineering hack on them and getting access to some high-value phones. If they had a bank of PO Box style lockers (so some rudimentary physical security) and a security guard I’d be satisfied, but a couple fellow founders standing guard over a card table while also themselves being distracted by the meet-and-greet nature of the event is not my idea of a good place to leave my phone.