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Example of why you should not use FaceID to unlock your phone
- type0 3y agoThere are a lot of good examples why you shouldn't use biometric IDs, not just FaceID
- ttfkam 3y ago[flagged]
- cal85 3y agoThe problem with this xkcd is it often gets used to suggest there’s no point taking security measures. Which is like saying you shouldn’t bother locking your front door because they could just get in by breaking the windows. A more valid interpretation of this xkcd is that one should be wary of being complacent after implementing a security measure. Or just that nerds can often be unrealistic about the threat models they face.
- ttfkam 3y agoBeing unrealistic about the threat models they face? You mean like thinking if a cop can't manhandle you into unlocking your phone through FaceTime, the incriminating evidence of criminal behavior on it will simply be ignored? Especially since "bad apples" are so rare and often brought to justice? You mean threat models like that?
- SnowHill9902 3y agoDoesn’t make sense. They sure won’t be unlocking the iPhone now.
- ttfkam 3y ago* whoosh! * Yep, the 4,096-bit RSA will be enough to protect you from a rogue cop.
- SnowHill9902 3y agoYes if you are already dead.
- ttfkam 3y agoAh, now I understand the miscommunication. Point is the technology, the phone, the FaceID, are immaterial. The ultimate goal is the protection of people. Having evidence of wrongdoing by government agents is important, but it is a means to the ends of a just and equitable society free of folks willing to use their position to abuse you. The coercion of FaceID is always secondary to the abuse of people. Fixation on the security measures being subverted misses the overall point.
- marklubi 3y agoHolding volume up + power for a couple of seconds will disable FaceID and require your pass code to unlock
- mort96 3y agoReally? On my phone, according to the settings in the Emergency SOS settings screen, holding down a volume button + power will call emergency services. Pressing the power button 5 times while the device is locked disables Face ID. But there's a setting to make that call emergency services instead, so it could be different on other phones.
- marklubi 3y agoThere are several different configuration options. A ~3 second hold of vol+power brings up the emergency call screen, and also locks the phone. If you keep holding for longer, it starts a countdown to call emergency services unless you release in time (I'm not going to test to see what that limit is) You can also configure so that 5 button presses calls emergency services.
- EduardoBautista 3y agoOn my phone it’s the standard way to turn off the phone. It also disables Face ID. It also allows you to contact emergency services. It does a few things at the same time.
- KMnO4 3y agoIf you ever can’t reach your phone to press the power button 5 times (which disables Face ID), just say “hey Siri, whose phone is this?” which will do the same.
- marcodiego 3y agoYour face, fingerprint, tokens... they are not good passwords, they are good identifiers. A password should not be public, only you should know and should be easy to replace if compromised. Face or fingerprint don't satisfy any of these properties. They should be used as identifiers, since they are very good for it; but they're far from good passwords.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoBiometrics nearly always weaken security due to needing a secondary unlock such as the usual pin code in the event that you can't use the bio-unlock. Getting into an accident and having your finger damaged or face rendered unrecognisable will require some secondary method, so biometrics can't be used as the sole unlock method for a personal device (a shared device can work around that by having multiple people authorised to unlock).
- acdha 3y agoThat’s not weakening security – the worst case scenario is that you are no more secure than the password you would have used, and not having to enter the password so frequently improves security both directly by significantly reducing the number of opportunities for someone to watch you enter it and indirectly by removing the incentive to use a weaker password which is easier to enter or having a longer auto-lock grace period. Something like a pass phrase is much easier to sell people on if they don’t have to tap it in 30 times a day.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI consider it weakening security as there's additional ways that can be compromised along with the password. I agree that biometrics can increase convenience and likely reduce the visibility of the secret password, but the trade-off is using relatively public facts such as your public face and/or your fingerprints that are left on most surfaces that you touch.
- acdha 3y ago
- acdha 3y agoOr why you should know the side-button 5 click shortcut to lock the device’s biometrics. The problem is that this is all about trade offs with no single optimal choice: for example, this only matters with cops who aren’t willing to threaten violence to get you to unlock your phone, and using a password incentivizes weak ones and gives someone else the opportunity to watch you enter it (say, at the police station when given a chance to call a lawyer). What’s probably better in this case would Photos having a minimum deletion time like Dropbox, or simply streaming it because then you know it can’t be deleted and control precisely when that’s active because other people would really like to be able to delete their stuff when the secret police break down their doors.
- hardwaresofton 3y agoThe very first suggestion on mastodon was that and it’s wrong — supposedly that combination is for emergency calling
- popol12 3y agoJust tried it, it locks my phone as expected. Maybe I haven’t configured an emergency’s number to call ?
- hardwaresofton 3y agoHmnnnn https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/contact-emergency-services-iph3c99374c/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/contact-emergency-ser... Yeah maybe this is why the other person thought so as well, so I guess it’s both true and false
- acdha 3y agoIt doesn’t become false because you tried to be pedantic without first confirming that you were correct. Just check first next time.
- markusw 3y ago
- ackatz 3y agoI’ll take the convenience of using FaceID over the possibility of being in a situation where it’s used against me. I don’t think that people should be generally worried about these scenarios.
- ihatepython 3y ago[flagged]
- zmgsabst 3y agoWhy does it excite you that a presumably innocent person doesn’t believe police are abusive? I’m struggling to understand the gloating — what exactly do you believe that enables?
- BirAdam 3y agoMy interpretation is that police aren’t all abusive to the population, and many are acting as if all cops are. As such, the poster was happy that someone felt most cops weren’t horrible people. Logically, it cannot be that all police are horrible as there are boat loads of police in the USA, and were all of them horrible, every single person would likely have a tale of abuse at the hands of law enforcement to tell. As that isn’t the case, one can assume most cops are just normal people.
- EGreg 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ is relevant If you want to be resilient to this stuff, have a program that pretends to delete things, or reveal all your data, but in fact requires far more authentication (and delays) to permanently delete, or reveal additional data. But that means you need the decoys to be very believable. Most of these authorities aren't going to dig further, and anyway they can't make you prove a negative. For example, TrueCrypt and VeraCrypt have hidden volumes: https://veracrypt.eu/en/Hidden%20Volume.html https://veracrypt.eu/en/Hidden%20Volume.html
- jaclaz 3y agoIs veracrypt available on iPhone?
- baggsie 3y agoIs there no way of recovering deleted photos from IOS? Granted I've only recovered data from camera SD cards but it was pretty painless.
- pointlessone 3y agoBy default all deleted photos/videos go to "recycling bin" for 30 days and then get completely deleted. But one can go there and completely delete it earlier. After that it's most likely impossible to recover it. There's also a chance it might've been uploaded to cloud but deleted only on the device.
- acdha 3y agoiOS has had storage encryption enabled by default since the iPhone 3GS (2009) so you’re not going to be able to recover anything from the hardware and applications have to work at it to retain data unintentionally. This is bad for data recovery and forensics but makes it much safer to sell a device.
- dzhiurgis 3y agoAccessing Deleted photos requires FaceID since pretty recent. Perhaps it should require a passcode instead.
- kayson 3y agoIs a fingerprint that much better? I certainly prefer it over FaceID, since my kid can't just hold the phone up to my face, but in a situation like this they could just put your finger on the sensor too...
- Tangurena2 3y agoNo. In the US, passwords have been held by courts to be "testimony" which requires a court order to force you to disclose. Fingerprints, gestures and face-id are legally equivalent to keys and any law enforcement agent can order you to use keys to unlock a thing. The difference is that the 5th Amendment prohibits testifying against yourself - therefore passwords are legally safer.
- pointlessone 3y agoRequire Attention for FaceID might be useful. It wouldn't unlock unless you're looking at the phone. So in cases like this just close your eyes unless you can properly lock the phone (e.g. you're already restrained). It's not very reliable for me (sometimes it still works) but seems like it's better than nothing.
- sbuk 3y agoThat’s how FaceID works.
- pointlessone 3y agoIf you have the feature turned on. I don't remember which way it is by default.
- daydream 3y agoIt's on by default.
- hardwaresofton 3y agoMeta point: thinking about this problem in the frame of “which button combination should the user have known to press” is probably the wrong frame. Discussion on HN and Mastodon seem to both be quite fixated on a shortcut most regular users probably wouldn’t know
- netsharc 3y agoNo FaceID: cop grabs your hand, puts your finger on the sensor. No fingerprint unlock: cop breaks phone, tells the court "It fell out of the person's hand.". Seems like a no-win situation.