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The Bay Area German bar that brought down Apple’s famed iPhone security
- samwillis 3y agoIt's interesting to look back at the commentary on HN from then: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1323561600&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1259884800&page=0&prefix=true&query=iPhone%20prototype&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1323561600&dateRange=custom&...
- KyeRussell 3y ago[dead]
- temac 3y agoThe notion that this was a "security breach" is weird. Did it contain private keys to production apple servers?
- Hydraulix989 3y agoPhysical security predates computer security by millennia
- temac 3y agoThe implication of a loss of a physical gadget, no matter the hype that exists around it, has low intrinsincal security severity. If the object could be otherwise used to have severe impacts, that would be another story.
- MAGZine 3y agoSo leaks about future products isn't a security threat? I think it is. That could definitely affect the stock price. Depending on the leak, it could definitely be more of an impact than a ip or data security breach. What will people do with digitizer firmware source? Other than bad pr, what affects does a data breach of customer records have on a company?
- gumby 3y agoCompanies have security protocols for whatever they want to protect. What they consider protecting is their business. New product prototypes, or just random possible product explorations are a common example. And the protocols they use (special enclosures, training people on how to not be obvious) are figured out the same way they are in computing, In fact the core terminology we use in computer security comes from physical security. And security protocols go back thousands of years. You can read about them in ancient literature,
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stingraycharles 3y agoSecurity doesn’t only have to imply software / online security. There’s physical security as well, which this seems to be referring to.
- newaccount74 3y agoThe design was the big secret that all their security protocols were supposed to protect. Revealing the design was the security breach.
- Symbiote 3y agoTheir security protocols were pretty lax, if they allowed someone to take a secret prototype to a bar, and to use it in the bar.
- therein 3y agoIt had "development silicon" instead of "production silicon". At the very very least that means you can use `sudo` and `su` after logging in with the well known "alpine" credentials.
- Hnrobert42 3y agoThe site guilted me into turning off my adblocker. I’m sympathetic to local media outlets. My god. That site is comically unusable. There is just no way to read an their article in peace. So when they, too, inevitably have to fold, let it be known, I tried.
- raverbashing 3y agoFunnily enough, I get the GDPR pop-up, agree to nothing and the site is readable
- Waterluvian 3y agoOh good gravy I just tried. It’s over 50% ads.
- spacemadness 3y agoEveryone involved should feel bad and really if this is the only way for them to figure out how to survive, they should just go out of business.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoMedia used to exist based off of classified ad sales, then tech companies absorbed all that cash flow. After that, most local media died.
- ant6n 3y ago> It’s over 50% ads. Like 1999…
- ce4 3y agoFirefox mobile's reader mode was usable
- samstave 3y agoUh, I have ublock origin and such... Site is clean as a whistle for me: (zoomed all the way out so you can see the whole page: https://i.imgur.com/I4EaG3A.png https://i.imgur.com/I4EaG3A.png - Edit: I appear to have “wooshed” the point… Sorry fam.
- phantom784 3y agoUsed to go there all the time - had no idea it was the bar where the iPhone prototype was lost (which happened long before I moved to the Bay).
- jackfoxy 3y agoRedwood, California? Was this article written by ChatGPT? Did a local human editor even read this?
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoDo human editors catch every mistake? No.
- jackfoxy 3y agoBut a news site (SFGate) that purports to be local to the area should know the name of the county seat of one of the Bay Area counties.
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoI feel ridiculous having to explain this, but it's possible to know the name of a place and still get it wrong when you intend to write it down, or overlook a mistake when reading it over.
- cronix 3y agoI see spelling mistakes all of the time in print media, and they've had spellcheck for 30+ years.
- mangosteenjuice 3y agoI can see how "Redwood City" could become "City of Redwood", and then just "Redwood", through multiple steps. I had never heard of it before moving to norcal.
- asveikau 3y agoNeil Young, who lives nearby, called it simply "Redwood" in 1972's hit Heart of Gold. (I've been to Hollywood; I've been to Redwood.)
- DerekL 3y ago
- Jon_Lowtek 3y ago> the most infamous security breach The XcodeGhost supply chain attack by the CIA infected a hundred million devices with malware. Quixun Zhaos chaos exploit chain took full control over iPhones from a drive by on a website and was used by china as part of the ugyhur genocide. And the cyberwar mercenary group NSO keeps targeting journalists and opposition around the world with what feels like an endless supply of exploits for apple devices. But somehow the hype for the iPhone4 starting three month earlier than planned in 2010 is called the "the most infamous". Apple PR at it's best, telling people the worst that can happen is loosing a phone at a bar.
- blowski 3y agoI’ve heard of the 2010 one, not the other you mentioned.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago"Infamous" has nothing to do with scale. It's entirely based on how well known something is. This incident had worldwide attention almost immediately and for weeks. Many articles were written at the time, and followup articles since (some of which are linked here). By all definitions of the word, it tracks.
- Jon_Lowtek 3y agoNot all definitions. Mine may be a bit old school, meaning publicly disgraced. Yours is more modern meaning slightly embarrassing. Both share that fame means "being spoken of" IMHO no one wants to be infamous, under the classical definition. Infamous people have a search warrant by the federal police. Infamous people are the ones your parents tell you not to interact with. No matter how often the "no bad PR" mantra is spoken, Steve Wozniak isn't going to wear a t-shirt referencing what i would consider their most infamous security breach. He isn't gangster enough for a teardrop tattoo.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoThe definitions are irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is that nobody seems to have heard of the attack. Something can’t be infamous (or regular famous) if nobody has heard of it, and that’s the issue people have with your claim. It might be a “publicly disgracing” attack but that alone doesn’t make it infamous. It still has to be well known, and quite simply, the iPhone case is so well known that it’s practically impossible to beat.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago> “Powell kept his job in spite of the lost prototype and worked on Apple’s iOS software for another seven years before leaving the company in 2017.” There’s actually a photo, taken as a joke, by Steve Wozniak you can find online. It shows him drinking a beer, holding an iPhone in the other hand, and he’s wearing a T-Shirt that reads: “I went drinking with Gray Powell and all I got was a lousy iPhone prototype.” https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/woz-has-fun-with-leaked-iphone-t-shirt-photos/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/woz-has-fun-with-lea... Thankfully, it appears Steve Jobs took his wrath out at Gizmodo than Powell.
- mk_stjames 3y agoI know Gray personally and have been able to hear the whole story from him, which is amazing and one of my favorite stories from the bay, ever. He's a great dude.
- anonymousiam 3y agoI had to read this sentence a few times before I realized it was the decision and not the child: "My wife and I even decided to have our third child on our way to a dinner at Gourmet Haus Staudt."
- myrandomcomment 3y agoI have spent countless hours there over the years. It was an after work place everyone could agree on. As you change jobs over the years, you still end up there, and you will almost always run into someone you know.
- eevilspock 3y ago@dang this is a clickbait title. "iPhone security" is entirely misleading.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pyrophane 3y agoThe only interesting part of this article to me is what happened to Powell: he continued to work at Apple on iOS for another 7 years before leaving the company. I also like this bit: "Apple forced its own ban from the bar on Powell — though it doesn’t sound like that ban was enforced very strictly." I wonder what that looked like.
- therein 3y agoBack when I joined Apple, this story was told in the orientation training. I remember some sketchy details to the story that seem to have gone unmentioned but it has been a long time and I am very unclear on the specifics so I will not mention them here. Especially since Apple really cares about these kind of things.
- jnsie 3y ago> One of the first things Volker did after navigating the throng of TV reporters was email Jobs. “I email Steve, and I said, ‘Steve, this is what happened. What do you want me to do? Can you please reach out and let me know? How do you want me to handle the situation?’” he said, noting that Jobs’ email was readily available online. Thought it a bit odd that one of the first things the bar owner did was email Steve Jobs. Like...why?
- replygirl 3y agosteve jobs had a reputation for responsiveness. i missed the warranty period by a couple weeks on my c2d imac and his office got me a free logic board replacement (priced ~$800 at the time)