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Apple's new iPhone security setting keeps thieves out of your digital accounts
- trodat14 3y agoThis is fantastic to see, although bitter-sweet considering I just had my phone and Apple ID stolen in August. I suspect the thief was watching as I unlocked my phone and got the passcode that way, although I was drugged and have amnesia (worst Tinder date ever) so it's possible I unlocked the phone for her. However they got the passcode, it was enough to immediately change the 'trusted phone number' with Apple and lock me out of my account. Even after hours on the phone with Apple Support explaining the situation and offering to provide a police report and any documentation they wanted to verify my identity, the weren't able/willing to help me without that phone number. There have been numerous hassles to moving to a new Apple ID, including having to provide proof-of-purchase for all my other Apple devices to get them unlinked from the stolen account. But the worst by far was losing years worth of photos, which I foolishly trusted to be stored safe in iCloud and are now locked away from me and available to criminals. This is a step in the right direction but I'd love for Apple to improve their policies around proving ownership of a stolen account. Even with this new protection, if you're ever robbed at gunpoint or coerced while drugged, your Apple ID can be taken and there's no path (that I've been able to find) to recover it.
- webninja 3y agoIt does sound like the worst Tinder date ever. What country or city were you in?
- trodat14 3y agoThis was in Mexico City. I've traveled there many times and generally feel very safe, but learned a valuable lesson in being overly trusting of new people. I'm thankful to be alive, since I don't know what drug I was given and how much. And fortunately she left my passport so I was able to get home. But what a mess, I really can't recommend it.
- ro_bit 3y agoRelated article and thread from Feb: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-iphone-security-theft-passcode-data-privacya-basic-iphone-feature-helps-criminals-steal-your-digital-life-cbf14b1a https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-iphone-security-theft-pas... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936015 Now it seems like thieves would not be able to immediately unlink a phone from Find My if they have the passcode, because of the security delay
- hellrope 3y agoWow, that seems scary
- kergonath 3y agoThis is a good development. Making phone theft less appealing is a good thing, and locking away precious personal data and accounts if it does still happen is great. It’s an ordeal to face against thieves to change any login information they could find looking through the data on a phone. I hope this will be secure and work as advertised.
- whoopsie 3y agoThis is basically a branding and broader application of the existing Keychain access control presence requirement, whose documentation specifically calls out these scenarios. All finance apps should be using presence verification post login and preceding an outgoing transaction or possible takeover action.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blokey 3y agoNo, it's way more than that. It forces an hour delay for people using the device passcode to reset the Apple ID password EXCEPT if its in a known location like home (also blocks changing the device passcode and turning off FindMy), and forces FaceID for these, even if the phone has been forced to forget the FaceID keys and require the device passcode. And it requires FaceID without a passcode ID fallback for certain categories of authentication.
- diffeomorphism 3y ago> And it requires FaceID without a passcode ID fallback for certain categories of authentication. Judging by how often finger print readers get false negatives, this seems like an incredibly bad and frustrating idea.
- shaunkoh 3y agoI’ve had great experiences with faceID and touchID over the years, FWIW.
- KolmogorovComp 3y agoThat's why I always enlist at least a few of my fingers, even though I'm effectively always using the same on a day-to-day basis.
- jsjohnst 3y agoGood thing Apple hasn’t used TouchID on phones in a long time then?
- tomduncalf 3y agoGreat news, I was pretty shocked that the original flaw still existed. Getting your phone stolen is annoying but the worst case is you buy a new phone, but thieves being able to take over your digital life is potentially catastrophic. Hopefully this works well, I assume third party apps such as banking will be able to opt in to the additional protection (not sure if this is strictly required actually, I checked my banking app and if Face ID fails you have to enter the banking PIN, you can’t enter the device PIN). Is there a way to lock individual apps so they require Face ID even if they weren’t designed to? A smart thief having access to the Gmail app for example, if the phone was unlocked when stolen, could wreak havoc.
- knallfrosch 3y agoIt's a welcome change, especially the time-lock is something that I always thought about. SMS and EMail as 2FA are dead when someone can unlock your phone. Still though, why don't iPhone owners use face unlock? Is it not good?
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoSay that to BofA. On my phone they still require email or text when I sign in. Guess what I receive on this iPhone? Right, email & text. On my PC it prompts for my YubiKey, but I cannot use it on iOS.
- olliej 3y agomasks? sunglasses? etc But also the phone locks back to requiring a passcode with enough failed attempts, so presumably people stealing them know how to induce recognition failure.
- battles 3y agoThey do use it but you can force passcode requirement by holding down the power button until 'slide to power off' appears. From daringfireball: '(One way the scam would run: Chat up the victim in a bar, and offer to use the target’s phone to snap a photo of the victim and their friends. Surreptitiously lock the phone out of Face ID when handing it back to the victim. Then, when next the victim wants to do anything on their phone, they need to enter their passcode. Either the thief or a partner in a team gleans the passcode. Then they steal the phone, knowing the device passcode.)'
- ErneX 3y agoIt’s very easy to trigger the fall back to enter PIN code.
- Aerbil313 3y agoIf anyone is interested, I wrote a small utility to time-lock data, to be able to self-restrict myself in terms of Screen Time etc. passwords: https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock
- gerwim 3y agoFinally. For current iOS versions, there is a workaround: use the “screentime” feature to disallow pincode changes. In screentime you can set a different code, so when anyone else can access your phone, they can’t change the code and lock you out of your phone.
- blokey 3y agoDoesn't work. If you get the screen time password wrong a few times it will let you put the device passcode in.
- Aerbil313 3y agoWhen the screen time settings are protected by a separate Apple ID with a separate phone number registered for 2FA (obviously the SIM card or eSIM shouldn’t be on the same phone), this works. In this situation you need access to that second account’s SIM card (which can be locked with a PIN) to remove the lock. Keep in mind afaict this is the situation with 2nd account having Rescue Code enabled. Things might be different if it’s not. Email me for how to actually restrict yourself with iOS Screen Time (without 3rd party apps) in a way which you really-really can’t bypass when you feel down. Disclaimer: Not an Apple employee, but a former smartphone addict, ahem, I’m sorry, user.[1] 1: I believe all smartphone users are addicts as much as rest of their lives allows it, without the use of hard restrictions.
- gerwim 3y agoAre you sure? According to Apple [0] it requires your Apple ID password. Also, I can't reproduce this on my iOS device: it's locked by a timer which increases exponentially. [0]: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102677 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102677
- gojomo 3y agoAfter a iPhone theft in Europe earlier this year, I don't quite trust Apple's assurances with regard to stolen iPhones. My phone was snatched from my hands in the street. I was able to wipe it via 'Find Devices' within a few minutes; I was able to track its location for the rest of the day, until I requested that my carrier irrevocably disable its network service. There was no evidence of any accesses of my information or accounts linked on the phone, then or since. In the following days, it was still visible in my Apple device lists as mine, with reference information like its model and serial number – as it should have remained, indefinitely, to prevent anyone else from associating it with their accounts. (Until recently, I still had an iPhone 4 listed there that hasn't been turned on for many years.) But sometime since then, it was removed from my Apple account – without my permission, and with no notification to me. This step would also apparently allow someone else to use the device with Apple services. Apple Support insists only a person who authenticated to them as me could have done that, and that they have no records of when/how that happened – a policy that seems designed to help criminals cover their tracks, with no help to customers other than: "you should change your password". Further, even if I provide the serial-number/IMEI with a police report, Apple says they can't determine if they've activated Apple services to that stolen property for someone else or provide me with any further help. I thus suspect theft networks have figured a way around Apple's breezy assurances about locking-out stolen devices, perhaps similar to how they've often deeply pierced major telecom providers in order to carry out SIM-swap attacks. But: if anyone on HN knows more about how the smartphone theft/fencing (chop shop?) operations typically work, or how Apple's systems do or don't protect against post-theft hijacking of registered Apple devices, I'd love to hear perspectives that either flesh-out, or refute, my impressions that Apple's related systems involve some false bluster & "security theater".
- tamiral 3y agoim going to add to this, long time ago my macbook was stolen when i was on holiday, i did all the things you mentioned, once i got back home i called Apple Support and they said "your warranty with us is over (it was 2 days lapsing from my travel) and to help you, you're going to need to buy apple care again" disgusting.
- pingou 3y ago
- miki123211 3y agoWhat I really wish apple had is the ability to have multiple passcodes with different behavior. Something like one passcode for ordinary phone use, one that would immediately and covertly send an emergency text to your family with your current location, one that would instantly wipe the device and one that would give you access to the hidden gay dating app you don't want people to know about.
- tycho-newman 3y agoYou can do this if you enable screen time for your own phone. At least for unwanted changes.
- xoa 3y agoAbsolutely, the idea of "coercion codes"/"distress codes" or the like goes back a very long time, long before electronic devices even, it's a pretty natural idea that someone could use different canned expressions to code for different responses that attackers wouldn't be able to distinguish. All the core aspects are in place on iOS to do a system both user friendly and quite powerful around that, and years and years later it remains too bad that's hard. In fact in a touch of irony it was at one point quite feasible and pleasant to do with a jailbroken iPhone and Touch ID. The Touch ID system actually distinguished between the various registered fingers (up to five), which in turn meant you could use fingers themselves to trigger other behavior. So "unlock with either index finger" could be "normal", but "unlock with thumb" or middle finger could then run scripts of your choosing in the background. It would be a real boon if Apple themselves did it, incorporating not just codes or biometrics even but also arbitrary information from phones sensors if advanced users wanted. So for example you could explicitly set a few geofences and say that certain actions could only be done within them (and only at certain times of day even), or certain apps viewed at all (by literally keeping the encryption keys for them locked away unless all conditions were met). If it's not even possible for you to comply when traveling in the first place and that's widely known and transparent it reduces the value in trying to coerce you. Such a system could also be useful outside of security fwiw, just in ordering our lives. Someone finding distraction hard could lock all their games and social media apps in a view accessible only at home and forbid any app store purchases as an aid in avoiding temptation. Anti-engagement instead of trying to get more engagement.
- boxed 3y agoToo little too late. This STILL means your apple id password is just your passcode. This is absolutely unacceptable.
- nerdjon 3y agoI always found it odd that sensitive apps like Banking I could just fall back to the same pin I use on my phone... that seems a bit wrong? Like ok I get it, there should be a fall back to biometrics not working for whatever reason. But for getting into your phone, but for apps that use biometrics since generally those have their own fall back of just using your password to login. Unless I am missing it, I don't see this being a change here? I hope that is coming if not.
- crossroadsguy 3y agoWell, like most things Apple, we of course just have to take Apple’s word on it. And if ever you find out someone was able to access it, as usual, you’ll be told - “it’s not possible and we won’t be able to share audit logs” or “blah..long password..blah”. Just like the horseshit that once an iPhone is stolen it’s bricked for a thief. A friend’s iPhone got stolen and after a week it was removed from his device list in iCloud account. Apple Support refused to even acknowledge it and then didn’t respond anymore. They shut him off.
- tikkun 3y agoRelated: Set up screen time, and disable password changes and account changes, and set a (different to your regular passcode) screen time passcode. Then you have a separate passcode that keeps sensitive account changes locked.
- throwaway290 3y agoAccount changes doesn't lock changes to your Apple ID for example, it's just about email accounts and pass keychain. Passcode change is not useful, why would a thief do it anyway...
- ubermonkey 3y agoThis is clever.
- J_Shelby_J 3y agoThe last time this came up, it was pointed out this too can be bypassed.
- tikkun 3y agoHow so? That's good to know that it can be bypassed.
- klaussilveira 3y agoHow?
- gottebp 3y agoI really wish there was a feature to lock the phone upon rapid movement, such as when a thief snatches the device while it is in use. It seems like an obvious mitigation to a common problem by way of the built in accelerometer.
- klaussilveira 3y agoThen he comes back and points a gun to your face, asking for the code.