7 ms·

iOS Single App Mode Escape

105 points by jnieminen 3y ago

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Part of me wishes that Apple would license out iOS and macOS; and the chips they run on; for the specific purposes of embedded and industrial development. A MacBook, as good as it is for Office work, simply is not suitable on the construction site. If macOS was, say, licensed to Panasonic for their Toughbook line and it was only available to commercial customers, that would be a better arrangement. Or, another example: iOS is fantastic, but trying to reconfigure an iPad might not be as good as just building a customized PoS system with iOS embedded. As long as these customized devices are for commercial sale only (and thus don't damage Apple's customer reputation)... why not? Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Even if Apple only sold chips 5 generations out of date (like the A12), it would be more than enough to provide a smooth, fast, easily updatable, easy to develop for, theoretically low cost platform for smart devices.
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  Doesn’t this break most of the things that are unique to Apple?
  - ender341341 3y ago
    Not entirely, It'd still be macOS/iPad OS and the accompanying hardware, but say for the suggested toughbook-like you still get the useful ergonomics of apple's software but in a ruggedized form factor in a market segment that has been stuck with a few specific products because of specific requirements. I don't think they're suggesting go full on wintel with every major computer manufacturer having a free for all making a same but slightly different styling and slightly different quality.
    - solardev 3y ago
      Sounds like that'd be an opportunity for collaboration, like an Apple x Panasonic special edition Toughbook. Likely that would have significant screen and sound and heat tradeoffs though. I hope Apple doesn't license out their stuff and dilute their brand though. Didn't they already try that with Apple compatible OS 7 PCs back in the day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1
- solardev 3y ago
  I would hate to see this. That's essentially what the PC and Android markets are like, which are both full of shitty manufacturers making poorly supported throwaway hardware. The IoT market is even worse. Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison. Never had a single hour of downtime, compared to all the reformats and driver reinstalls and registry hacks and display glitches and such that I've experienced with Windows machines, even top end Razers, Lenovos, Asus, and Alienware/Dell. Android was similarly terrible until the Nexus/Pixel lines, which again have first party control. Even the Play Edition and Motorola phones had issues not worth dealing with. There's plenty of generic chips out there, and no name manufacturers making commodity garbage. Apple doesn't need to play in that market.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    > Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison You weren't around in the 1990s...
    - solardev 3y ago
      How's that? I wasn't a Mac user back then (except in school), but IBM-compatible PCs were still a headache back then. I over-applied thermal paste and misconfigured `config.sys` or set the wrong COM port baud rates more times than I can count...
      - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
        MacOS 9 was a dog's breakfast of an OS. OS X wasn't released until 2001, so until then all those Mac users were forced to run a cooperatively schedulding OS without even protected memory (!!). A typical PowerMactinosh's uptime was measured in the single-digit hours, not the weeks you'd get from NT, or months for a Unix box. ...there's no excuse for that given Apple's vertical-integration.
        solardev 3y ago
        Ah, I can believe that. The Macs we did have at school did not impress much. We saw the sad Mac face quite a lot, and had to use the debugger often ("g finder" IIRC). I never had experience with NT until Windows XP. Did play around with MS-DOS, PC-DOS, Win 3.x and 9x, OS/2 Warp, and early Slackware though. None of those were particularly user-friendly or stable, lol, especially by today's standards. At the extreme end, I've fried a motherboard (shorted it somehow on first boot) and melted a laptop (tried to install Linux on it, apparently didn't have the fan drivers or something). Then early 3Dfx cards were also a pain to get working reliably, especially with SLI. It was just a rough time for everyone, lol. I think the only things from that era that actually worked well were my PalmPilot and Casio calculator watch :)
- plumeria 3y ago
  > a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Have you seen Zephyr? [0] [0] https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/
- olliej 3y ago
  I really don't udnerstand this. This is literally saying "I really wish that Apple would do that thing they did in the 90s that pretty much bankrupted the company". Apple is a hardware company, the OS is what makes it possible to use the hardware. One without the other does not make sense given that model. It's like saying "I wish Nintendo would license switch hardware and OS out to other people".
- m463 3y ago
  Apple did that once, and then changed their mind. I suspect they think it degrades their brand. They don't even let the owners of their iphones run their own software without asking permission.
- Angostura 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation > Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. That’s effectively what runs the HomePods and AppleTV.
qingcharles 3y ago
When I was in jail they had kiosks to order commissary snacks. I managed to take advantage of a race condition to crash out of the app onto the desktop. Typing was a pain because you had to use the on-screen keyboard, and I would only have a few minutes before a crowd of detainees would appear and start squawking excitedly, hoping that I could access their Facebook accounts for them, and drawing the attention of the guard. (there was a lot of bugs in the kiosk, for instance, no bounds checking on most inputs)
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I love reading comments like this, but I admit I'm always pretty curious how the poster ended up in jail. Care to share what your conviction was for?
  - Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
    They right clicked and pressed view source. I’m just surprised they let them out after committing such an heinous act…
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      You joke, but something like that is a terrifying possibility considering where things like device-attestation is headed, combined with a lack of understanding of the technology, especially the local level (e.g. I'm sure probably most of us here on HN got into trouble in elementary-school for "breaking the computers" or similar - I don't expect a local provincial magistrate to be any more understanding-of-things than the fuming head at my school)
      - Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
        Oh, I joke because I know we are not that far away from it… https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/15/f12-isnt-hacking-missouri-governor-threatens-to-prosecute-local-journalist-for-finding-exposed-state-data/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/15/f12-isnt-hacking-missouri-... https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/pen-testers-who-got-arrested-doing-their-jobs-tell-all https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/pen-test...
enoch2090 3y ago
Back in highschool they also had those kiosks for adding funds to our student cards, and it would speak out like "Success". I saw someone crashed out the app (probably with a race condition, too) and used the ethernet to download audio files they prepared on the internal servers. The next day the kiosk began to yell hilarious stuff on success and that was hell of a week...
- matt-attack 3y ago
  A beautiful example of hacking. Didn’t disable the primary function of the device nor did he profit from a scheme. Just messed with the usage in a humorous way. Bravo.
ballenf 3y ago
I get the desire to be compensated for the work that went into reproducing the Guided Access escape, but I have to agree that this is not a security issue. Guided Access controls are in the Accessibility settings. Apple has marketed the feature as one of convenience. And I think a hard reboot, at least this used to be true, will also exit the mode. (Hold power and home button or power and volume button combo.)
- barbican64 3y ago
  [dead]
- walterbell 3y ago
  > a hard reboot, at least this used to be true, will also exit the mode. Reboot "exit" to the passcode entry screen is less bad than the unlocked phone in this escape.
  - jrmg 3y ago
    Two comments on that: 1) I wonder if the exploit here works with passcode lock on? I suspect it does not, because there’s no mention of passcode entry in the steps. 2) My rebuttal was going to be ‘but most kiosk devices don’t allow access to the power button’ - but this exploit requires that too.
    - barbican64 3y ago
      [dead]
- amluto 3y ago
  For an accessibility feature, it’s extraordinarily inaccessible. Turning it on results in an awful UI involving masking off parts of the screen. No way to invert the selection. Settings aren’t saved. Choosing a password is mandatory (why can’t the normal lock screen password be a default?). And trying to turn on Guided Access at all is far from 100% reliable. I’ve broken out of it by the extremely complex protocol of swiping up by accident, although not recently. Maybe it’s been fixed.
amluto 3y ago
> Features like Guided Access and Restrictions are designed to provide parents and system administrators with the tools to discourage violations of policy by legitimate users. Guided Access is buggy crap. I’ve seen children break out of Guided Access. I also regularly need to completely reboot an iPad to get Guided Access to work at all.

105 points by jnieminen 3y ago

Part of me wishes that Apple would license out iOS and macOS; and the chips they run on; for the specific purposes of embedded and industrial development. A MacBook, as good as it is for Office work, simply is not suitable on the construction site. If macOS was, say, licensed to Panasonic for their Toughbook line and it was only available to commercial customers, that would be a better arrangement. Or, another example: iOS is fantastic, but trying to reconfigure an iPad might not be as good as just building a customized PoS system with iOS embedded. As long as these customized devices are for commercial sale only (and thus don't damage Apple's customer reputation)... why not? Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Even if Apple only sold chips 5 generations out of date (like the A12), it would be more than enough to provide a smooth, fast, easily updatable, easy to develop for, theoretically low cost platform for smart devices.

alphabettsy 3y ago
Doesn’t this break most of the things that are unique to Apple?
- ender341341 3y ago
  Not entirely, It'd still be macOS/iPad OS and the accompanying hardware, but say for the suggested toughbook-like you still get the useful ergonomics of apple's software but in a ruggedized form factor in a market segment that has been stuck with a few specific products because of specific requirements. I don't think they're suggesting go full on wintel with every major computer manufacturer having a free for all making a same but slightly different styling and slightly different quality.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Sounds like that'd be an opportunity for collaboration, like an Apple x Panasonic special edition Toughbook. Likely that would have significant screen and sound and heat tradeoffs though. I hope Apple doesn't license out their stuff and dilute their brand though. Didn't they already try that with Apple compatible OS 7 PCs back in the day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1
solardev 3y ago
I would hate to see this. That's essentially what the PC and Android markets are like, which are both full of shitty manufacturers making poorly supported throwaway hardware. The IoT market is even worse. Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison. Never had a single hour of downtime, compared to all the reformats and driver reinstalls and registry hacks and display glitches and such that I've experienced with Windows machines, even top end Razers, Lenovos, Asus, and Alienware/Dell. Android was similarly terrible until the Nexus/Pixel lines, which again have first party control. Even the Play Edition and Motorola phones had issues not worth dealing with. There's plenty of generic chips out there, and no name manufacturers making commodity garbage. Apple doesn't need to play in that market.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison You weren't around in the 1990s...
  - solardev 3y ago
    How's that? I wasn't a Mac user back then (except in school), but IBM-compatible PCs were still a headache back then. I over-applied thermal paste and misconfigured `config.sys` or set the wrong COM port baud rates more times than I can count...
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      MacOS 9 was a dog's breakfast of an OS. OS X wasn't released until 2001, so until then all those Mac users were forced to run a cooperatively schedulding OS without even protected memory (!!). A typical PowerMactinosh's uptime was measured in the single-digit hours, not the weeks you'd get from NT, or months for a Unix box. ...there's no excuse for that given Apple's vertical-integration.
      - solardev 3y ago
        Ah, I can believe that. The Macs we did have at school did not impress much. We saw the sad Mac face quite a lot, and had to use the debugger often ("g finder" IIRC). I never had experience with NT until Windows XP. Did play around with MS-DOS, PC-DOS, Win 3.x and 9x, OS/2 Warp, and early Slackware though. None of those were particularly user-friendly or stable, lol, especially by today's standards. At the extreme end, I've fried a motherboard (shorted it somehow on first boot) and melted a laptop (tried to install Linux on it, apparently didn't have the fan drivers or something). Then early 3Dfx cards were also a pain to get working reliably, especially with SLI. It was just a rough time for everyone, lol. I think the only things from that era that actually worked well were my PalmPilot and Casio calculator watch :)
plumeria 3y ago
> a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Have you seen Zephyr? [0] [0] https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/
olliej 3y ago
I really don't udnerstand this. This is literally saying "I really wish that Apple would do that thing they did in the 90s that pretty much bankrupted the company". Apple is a hardware company, the OS is what makes it possible to use the hardware. One without the other does not make sense given that model. It's like saying "I wish Nintendo would license switch hardware and OS out to other people".
m463 3y ago
Apple did that once, and then changed their mind. I suspect they think it degrades their brand. They don't even let the owners of their iphones run their own software without asking permission.
Angostura 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation > Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. That’s effectively what runs the HomePods and AppleTV.

qingcharles 3y ago

When I was in jail they had kiosks to order commissary snacks. I managed to take advantage of a race condition to crash out of the app onto the desktop. Typing was a pain because you had to use the on-screen keyboard, and I would only have a few minutes before a crowd of detainees would appear and start squawking excitedly, hoping that I could access their Facebook accounts for them, and drawing the attention of the guard. (there was a lot of bugs in the kiosk, for instance, no bounds checking on most inputs)

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I love reading comments like this, but I admit I'm always pretty curious how the poster ended up in jail. Care to share what your conviction was for?
- Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
  They right clicked and pressed view source. I’m just surprised they let them out after committing such an heinous act…
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    You joke, but something like that is a terrifying possibility considering where things like device-attestation is headed, combined with a lack of understanding of the technology, especially the local level (e.g. I'm sure probably most of us here on HN got into trouble in elementary-school for "breaking the computers" or similar - I don't expect a local provincial magistrate to be any more understanding-of-things than the fuming head at my school)
    - Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
      Oh, I joke because I know we are not that far away from it… https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/15/f12-isnt-hacking-missouri-governor-threatens-to-prosecute-local-journalist-for-finding-exposed-state-data/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/15/f12-isnt-hacking-missouri-... https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/pen-testers-who-got-arrested-doing-their-jobs-tell-all https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/pen-test...

enoch2090 3y ago

Back in highschool they also had those kiosks for adding funds to our student cards, and it would speak out like "Success". I saw someone crashed out the app (probably with a race condition, too) and used the ethernet to download audio files they prepared on the internal servers. The next day the kiosk began to yell hilarious stuff on success and that was hell of a week...

matt-attack 3y ago
A beautiful example of hacking. Didn’t disable the primary function of the device nor did he profit from a scheme. Just messed with the usage in a humorous way. Bravo.

ballenf 3y ago

I get the desire to be compensated for the work that went into reproducing the Guided Access escape, but I have to agree that this is not a security issue. Guided Access controls are in the Accessibility settings. Apple has marketed the feature as one of convenience. And I think a hard reboot, at least this used to be true, will also exit the mode. (Hold power and home button or power and volume button combo.)

barbican64 3y ago
[dead]
walterbell 3y ago
> a hard reboot, at least this used to be true, will also exit the mode. Reboot "exit" to the passcode entry screen is less bad than the unlocked phone in this escape.
- jrmg 3y ago
  Two comments on that: 1) I wonder if the exploit here works with passcode lock on? I suspect it does not, because there’s no mention of passcode entry in the steps. 2) My rebuttal was going to be ‘but most kiosk devices don’t allow access to the power button’ - but this exploit requires that too.
  - barbican64 3y ago
    [dead]
amluto 3y ago
For an accessibility feature, it’s extraordinarily inaccessible. Turning it on results in an awful UI involving masking off parts of the screen. No way to invert the selection. Settings aren’t saved. Choosing a password is mandatory (why can’t the normal lock screen password be a default?). And trying to turn on Guided Access at all is far from 100% reliable. I’ve broken out of it by the extremely complex protocol of swiping up by accident, although not recently. Maybe it’s been fixed.

amluto 3y ago

> Features like Guided Access and Restrictions are designed to provide parents and system administrators with the tools to discourage violations of policy by legitimate users. Guided Access is buggy crap. I’ve seen children break out of Guided Access. I also regularly need to completely reboot an iPad to get Guided Access to work at all.