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From the MacRumors article: > For especially sensitive actions, including changing the password of the Apple ID account associated with the iPhone, the feature

by jerlam 3y ago

From the MacRumors article: > For especially sensitive actions, including changing the password of the Apple ID account associated with the iPhone, the feature adds a security delay on top of biometric authentication. [...] However, Apple said there will be no delay when the iPhone is in familiar locations, such as at home or work. It's fascinating how the device is using location as another security factor.

hnburnsy 3y ago
> From the MacRumors article: > > > For especially sensitive actions, including changing the password of the Apple ID account associated with the iPhone, the feature adds a security delay on top of biometric authentication. [...] However, Apple said there will be no delay when the iPhone is in familiar locations, such as at home or work. > > It's fascinating how the device is using location as another security factor. Another vector for law enforcement or state actors to request private information. We will see warrants for all users who have these coordinates near their "familiar location"
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Why would they go to Apple when they can simply go to your mobile service provider? https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vqkv/how-fbi-gets-phone-data-att-tmobile-verizon https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vqkv/how-fbi-gets-phone-da... https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=21088576 https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=2108... > The presentation provides more recent figures on how long telecoms retain data for. AT&T holds onto data such as call records, cell site, and tower dumps for 7 years. T-Mobile holds similar information for 2 years, and Verizon holds it for 1 year. This might not apply if your opsec avoids mobile providers and you're running only wifi, but that seems like a rare edge case. This fight is fought in court and legislation unfortunately.
- olliej 3y ago
  How would that warrant work? It would require apple being forced to send a software update that told every phone about every geofence and then have those phones report back if they intersected. _or_ they can just ask the carriers which cellphones are where, which they are already able to do despite it being fairly questionable to me.
  - manwe150 3y ago
    I assume the query from Apple to the phone is not "are these (potentially spoofed) coordinates X trusted", but rather "is your current location trusted". The later doesn't seem like it would leak any useful information to law enforcement, as well as being harder for an attacker to forge during the password-change process. The easier software update for Apple, technically speaking, then would probably just be to have a particular phone by a particular user continuously report its particular location. It seems doubtful Apple would currently add such a backdoor though. However, the radio towers need to triangulate your location to be able to communicate with you, which is not questionable, since that is their purpose. But then storing that information for any non-trivial length of time seems fairly questionable to me too.
    - olliej 3y ago
      I'm not sure what you're exactly saying so we might be talking at cross purposes. I also see this was 4 days ago so not sure if you'll ever see my response let alone reply :D (hello future person who happens to see this!) On Mac+iOS your devices learn places where they often stay, that information is never exposed to apple at all. I can't recall from the massive product security document whether these are "never leave the device" or "only ever in the end-to-end encrypted synchronized storage". Hence without an update that apple pushed to every device to specifically undermined that privacy protection, there's no way for apple to answer the question of "which devices hang out around this location". If you get to the point of law enforcement being able to do that, then no amount of device security on any device matters, because even if you were to try and use a custom android image we've reached a point where law enforcement could also just say "a device cannot boot an OS it cannot confirm will obey the spy-on-users legislation". That's why it's so important that these various nonsense laws of compelled spying for any purpose get blocked.
morpheuskafka 3y ago
That seems easy enough to bypass, as civilian GPS is an unauthenticated protocol, you could just put the phone in a metal box and transmit fake signals from three SDR radios.
- ls612 3y ago
  But you the thief don’t know which coordinates to spoof, and location services uses several data sources not just GPS.
  - filoleg 3y ago
    Even if you aren’t law enforcement, it is rather trivial to find someone’s work and home address. Law enforcement would definitely have access to that information, so they would know which coordinates to spoof. > location services uses several data sources not just GPS Only if those other data sources are available, afaik.
    - massysett 3y ago
      This feature is intended to protect against common or even organized criminals, not state actors.
      - filoleg 3y ago
        Exactly my point, yeah. Apple adding this feature wouldn’t do much to how easy it is for law enforcement to access your device (once they have physical access). Because it is already not that difficult for them.
  - RockRobotRock 3y ago
    >location services uses several data sources not just GPS Interesting idea...Maybe nearby WiFi APs is one data point that the phone uses for determining location without battery intensive use of GPS.
- cmsj 3y ago
nytesky 3y ago
Location dependent encryption was a feature of the first season of Agents of Shield.
Terretta 3y ago
Check out 'conditional access' from single sign-on providers like M365: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/conditional-access/overview#common-signals https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/conditional... Look at all the signals! And what you can do based on them. PS. If you are building a SaaS, know that 85% of SMBs can SSO or "Sign in with Microsoft". There are things besides GitHub and Google Sign in, and the ones with Microsoft are (a) probably supposed to use it, and (b) don't mind subscribing to software. Focusing exclusively on Oauth or SSO from Google or GitHub accounts is an awkward decision. Add 'Sign-in with Microsoft' and your TAM just got much bigger.

by jerlam 3y ago

hnburnsy 3y ago

> From the MacRumors article: > > > For especially sensitive actions, including changing the password of the Apple ID account associated with the iPhone, the feature adds a security delay on top of biometric authentication. [...] However, Apple said there will be no delay when the iPhone is in familiar locations, such as at home or work. > > It's fascinating how the device is using location as another security factor. Another vector for law enforcement or state actors to request private information. We will see warrants for all users who have these coordinates near their "familiar location"

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Why would they go to Apple when they can simply go to your mobile service provider? https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vqkv/how-fbi-gets-phone-data-att-tmobile-verizon https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vqkv/how-fbi-gets-phone-da... https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=21088576 https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=2108... > The presentation provides more recent figures on how long telecoms retain data for. AT&T holds onto data such as call records, cell site, and tower dumps for 7 years. T-Mobile holds similar information for 2 years, and Verizon holds it for 1 year. This might not apply if your opsec avoids mobile providers and you're running only wifi, but that seems like a rare edge case. This fight is fought in court and legislation unfortunately.
olliej 3y ago
How would that warrant work? It would require apple being forced to send a software update that told every phone about every geofence and then have those phones report back if they intersected. _or_ they can just ask the carriers which cellphones are where, which they are already able to do despite it being fairly questionable to me.
- manwe150 3y ago
  I assume the query from Apple to the phone is not "are these (potentially spoofed) coordinates X trusted", but rather "is your current location trusted". The later doesn't seem like it would leak any useful information to law enforcement, as well as being harder for an attacker to forge during the password-change process. The easier software update for Apple, technically speaking, then would probably just be to have a particular phone by a particular user continuously report its particular location. It seems doubtful Apple would currently add such a backdoor though. However, the radio towers need to triangulate your location to be able to communicate with you, which is not questionable, since that is their purpose. But then storing that information for any non-trivial length of time seems fairly questionable to me too.
  - olliej 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you're exactly saying so we might be talking at cross purposes. I also see this was 4 days ago so not sure if you'll ever see my response let alone reply :D (hello future person who happens to see this!) On Mac+iOS your devices learn places where they often stay, that information is never exposed to apple at all. I can't recall from the massive product security document whether these are "never leave the device" or "only ever in the end-to-end encrypted synchronized storage". Hence without an update that apple pushed to every device to specifically undermined that privacy protection, there's no way for apple to answer the question of "which devices hang out around this location". If you get to the point of law enforcement being able to do that, then no amount of device security on any device matters, because even if you were to try and use a custom android image we've reached a point where law enforcement could also just say "a device cannot boot an OS it cannot confirm will obey the spy-on-users legislation". That's why it's so important that these various nonsense laws of compelled spying for any purpose get blocked.

morpheuskafka 3y ago

That seems easy enough to bypass, as civilian GPS is an unauthenticated protocol, you could just put the phone in a metal box and transmit fake signals from three SDR radios.

ls612 3y ago
But you the thief don’t know which coordinates to spoof, and location services uses several data sources not just GPS.
- filoleg 3y ago
  Even if you aren’t law enforcement, it is rather trivial to find someone’s work and home address. Law enforcement would definitely have access to that information, so they would know which coordinates to spoof. > location services uses several data sources not just GPS Only if those other data sources are available, afaik.
  - massysett 3y ago
    This feature is intended to protect against common or even organized criminals, not state actors.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      Exactly my point, yeah. Apple adding this feature wouldn’t do much to how easy it is for law enforcement to access your device (once they have physical access). Because it is already not that difficult for them.
- RockRobotRock 3y ago
  >location services uses several data sources not just GPS Interesting idea...Maybe nearby WiFi APs is one data point that the phone uses for determining location without battery intensive use of GPS.
cmsj 3y ago

nytesky 3y ago

Location dependent encryption was a feature of the first season of Agents of Shield.

Terretta 3y ago

Check out 'conditional access' from single sign-on providers like M365: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/conditional-access/overview#common-signals https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/conditional... Look at all the signals! And what you can do based on them. PS. If you are building a SaaS, know that 85% of SMBs can SSO or "Sign in with Microsoft". There are things besides GitHub and Google Sign in, and the ones with Microsoft are (a) probably supposed to use it, and (b) don't mind subscribing to software. Focusing exclusively on Oauth or SSO from Google or GitHub accounts is an awkward decision. Add 'Sign-in with Microsoft' and your TAM just got much bigger.