4 ms·

> What is the better solution that retains the anti-theft capabilities of the device? One that doesn't literally make the device unusable in the case of a mist

> What is the better solution that retains the anti-theft capabilities of the device? One that doesn't literally make the device unusable in the case of a mistake. We protect far more valuable property with far less fancy mechanisms. If you're genuinely worried about theft, then you need layers of simple security, not a one shot nuclear bomb embedded into your device. > The inability for a thief to just flash the device with fresh firmware and use it as if it were new is a key selling point of the device and might justify the higher price tag to some buyers. Is that why people care about theft?

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> We protect far more valuable property with far less fancy mechanisms. I cannot name a single thing I own that is more valuable than the information contained in my electronic devices. You could steal the contents of my house and the building materials and it still would not be more valuable.
- akira2501 3y ago
  This seems to imply that your device contains the only copy of this information in existence and that cloud backups and PIN keys are inadequate for your security requirements. Are people actually trying to steal your information or just the chunk of valuable plastic that's currently a portal for accessing some of it? Meanwhile.. all the animals and sometimes children at my house are more valuable than any of my information, at least, to me. And of course, the most valuable and abstract of them all, my own health.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    It's not losing the information that the computer holds that's the risk. For most people, their computer contains the keys to be able to steal all their money and major assets, commit crimes in their name, defraud their family and friends, and endanger their employment. Those keys are embodied in the trusted ability to access their primary email and social media accounts, and possibly their work accounts too.
    - akho 3y ago
      If possession of a laptop allowed that sort of access, the thief could just unlink the device from apple id. Passwords and drive encryption protect data. Remote bricking supposedly decreases the resale value of the laptop hardware, which supposedly makes people steal them less.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        > which supposedly makes people steal them less. Which achieves the goal (not have laptop with this important info stolen).
    - akira2501 3y ago
      Yes, and I can do all that now without your device, and I was able to do it before digital devices became prevalent. Yet, it does not happen, because no one has any motive to do this to you even if the means to do it has now been reduced to simply taking your phone. If someone has that motive then access to your phone will /not/ be the deciding factor. The opportunity costs don't bear out either, as just because someone has an expensive piece of tech, does not mean they have the kind of assets you can drain into Bermuda. The reward ratio is not significant to plan for this eventuality in any meaningful way. Which is why most people when faced with the prospect of insane security will just choose to layer two simpler methods together instead, such as basic old 2FA via SMS or FIDO. These technically reduce security barrier of entry but allow the portions of the implementation to live further apart from each other, which for most people, is enough. Also, if your work didn't issue you a secure PC and trusted 2FA hardware, then allows you to have privileged information like email on your home laptop, that's entirely bad policy on their part.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        >If someone has that motive then access to your phone will /not/ be the deciding factor. Ease of committing a crime is surely a factor in probability of that crime occurring. Far more people are willing to look over a shoulder for someone’s phone PIN or slip them a roofie to get access to bank account apps and transfer money than they are to confront them while conscious and threaten them to give them their money. (Hence the advice to keep access information to only nominal amounts of wealth in phones).
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > Meanwhile.. all the animals and sometimes children at my house are more valuable than any of my information, at least, to me. I expected loved ones to be excluded from the definition of property in this context, being a discussion about theft and not more violent things like kidnapping. > Are people actually trying to steal your information I do not know everyone’s intentions, I just know what my loss potential is. I do not keep many paper records, so getting into my digital files will give up all of my information as well as TOTP and SMS 2FA codes that serve as proof of my identity. Once someone can prove they are me, then it is an uphill battle for me to prove someone else was being me, and even doing that does not always help.
xenadu02 3y ago
You need only look at cellular carriers and the rampant social engineering going on that gets people's cell numbers (and thus SMS messages) diverted to understand that you can't give people an inch here or the entire system falls apart. The system must be designed around human factors like customer service agents being yelled at by a scammer pretending to be the legitimate owner. By definition making a system even somewhat secure against social engineering and the like means it is less forgiving of mistakes. And once again I must keep reminding people that "Find My" is an opt-in feature that you are not required to use.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  > And once again I must keep reminding people that "Find My" is an opt-in feature that you are not required to use. Isn’t that the bad part about this story? That someone with your laptop can reset it if you’ve not used ‘find my’?
  - xenadu02 3y ago
    > Isn’t that the bad part about this story? That someone with your laptop can reset it if you’ve not used ‘find my’? In the default state the Mac works the way people say they want it to work. It is not enrolled in Find My and Apple has no idea who owns the machine. You could have walked into a retail store and bought it with cash. Or bought it used on Craigslist. In that blank state the machine is wide open, including wide open to be enrolled in Find My with Activation Lock. That's exactly how it is supposed to work. The only way it could be otherwise is if the server did what people are falsely claiming it does: maintain a big database that indicates who is the registered owner of each machine thereby preventing someone from maliciously enrolling a non-enrolled machine. (And FYI a non-enrolled machine is not constantly checking in with the server... that only happens during restore.) This is just another kind of CAP-like theorem situation. No one can provide anti-theft locking capability without making a tradeoff. Any sort of anti-theft feature must choose one of these strategies: 1. Trivial bypass via firmware wipe, making the feature useless. 2. Require a central database tracking ownership (think car titles), which is the dystopian world people hate 3. Physical possession of a stolen and non-enrolled machine allows the thief to enroll the machine (this case). Looks identical to a non-enrolling person selling to an enrolling buyer. Overriding the anti-theft system must be a high bar otherwise social engineering or malicious employee attacks become a significant weakness. Even if you provide proof-of-purchase there is no way to know if you sold the machine to someone else then stole it back from them in which case breaking the activation lock is helping a scammer. Providing opt-out is either #1 or #2 above. If you don't register that opt-out in a central database then it would likely be easy to bypass with a firmware wipe which leads back to square one. Just about the only alternative I can think of is a fusible link system where the first person to setup the machine can choose "Do not allow anti-theft" and that blows a fuse. That sure will piss off buyers of used machines when they find out the first owner made a permanent choice on their behalf.
PeterisP 3y ago
Having a phone stolen is a massive inconvenience, and it used to happen on large scale. The main way to reduce the risk of that (which actually works) is by targeting the motivation of the thieves by making the stolen device nearly worthless for resale or reuse - i.e. literally making both the device and its parts unusable even for a semi-skilled operator of a pawn shop buying large quantities of stolen phones. It's not that my specific information is so worth protecting, but that there is a social benefit as if everyone's phones are nearly worthless to steal, then the thefts go way down.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> We protect far more valuable property with far less fancy mechanisms. I cannot name a single thing I own that is more valuable than the information contained in my electronic devices. You could steal the contents of my house and the building materials and it still would not be more valuable.

akira2501 3y ago
This seems to imply that your device contains the only copy of this information in existence and that cloud backups and PIN keys are inadequate for your security requirements. Are people actually trying to steal your information or just the chunk of valuable plastic that's currently a portal for accessing some of it? Meanwhile.. all the animals and sometimes children at my house are more valuable than any of my information, at least, to me. And of course, the most valuable and abstract of them all, my own health.
- jameshart 3y ago
  It's not losing the information that the computer holds that's the risk. For most people, their computer contains the keys to be able to steal all their money and major assets, commit crimes in their name, defraud their family and friends, and endanger their employment. Those keys are embodied in the trusted ability to access their primary email and social media accounts, and possibly their work accounts too.
  - akho 3y ago
    If possession of a laptop allowed that sort of access, the thief could just unlink the device from apple id. Passwords and drive encryption protect data. Remote bricking supposedly decreases the resale value of the laptop hardware, which supposedly makes people steal them less.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      > which supposedly makes people steal them less. Which achieves the goal (not have laptop with this important info stolen).
  - akira2501 3y ago
    Yes, and I can do all that now without your device, and I was able to do it before digital devices became prevalent. Yet, it does not happen, because no one has any motive to do this to you even if the means to do it has now been reduced to simply taking your phone. If someone has that motive then access to your phone will /not/ be the deciding factor. The opportunity costs don't bear out either, as just because someone has an expensive piece of tech, does not mean they have the kind of assets you can drain into Bermuda. The reward ratio is not significant to plan for this eventuality in any meaningful way. Which is why most people when faced with the prospect of insane security will just choose to layer two simpler methods together instead, such as basic old 2FA via SMS or FIDO. These technically reduce security barrier of entry but allow the portions of the implementation to live further apart from each other, which for most people, is enough. Also, if your work didn't issue you a secure PC and trusted 2FA hardware, then allows you to have privileged information like email on your home laptop, that's entirely bad policy on their part.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      >If someone has that motive then access to your phone will /not/ be the deciding factor. Ease of committing a crime is surely a factor in probability of that crime occurring. Far more people are willing to look over a shoulder for someone’s phone PIN or slip them a roofie to get access to bank account apps and transfer money than they are to confront them while conscious and threaten them to give them their money. (Hence the advice to keep access information to only nominal amounts of wealth in phones).
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > Meanwhile.. all the animals and sometimes children at my house are more valuable than any of my information, at least, to me. I expected loved ones to be excluded from the definition of property in this context, being a discussion about theft and not more violent things like kidnapping. > Are people actually trying to steal your information I do not know everyone’s intentions, I just know what my loss potential is. I do not keep many paper records, so getting into my digital files will give up all of my information as well as TOTP and SMS 2FA codes that serve as proof of my identity. Once someone can prove they are me, then it is an uphill battle for me to prove someone else was being me, and even doing that does not always help.

xenadu02 3y ago

You need only look at cellular carriers and the rampant social engineering going on that gets people's cell numbers (and thus SMS messages) diverted to understand that you can't give people an inch here or the entire system falls apart. The system must be designed around human factors like customer service agents being yelled at by a scammer pretending to be the legitimate owner. By definition making a system even somewhat secure against social engineering and the like means it is less forgiving of mistakes. And once again I must keep reminding people that "Find My" is an opt-in feature that you are not required to use.

Aeolun 3y ago
> And once again I must keep reminding people that "Find My" is an opt-in feature that you are not required to use. Isn’t that the bad part about this story? That someone with your laptop can reset it if you’ve not used ‘find my’?
- xenadu02 3y ago
  > Isn’t that the bad part about this story? That someone with your laptop can reset it if you’ve not used ‘find my’? In the default state the Mac works the way people say they want it to work. It is not enrolled in Find My and Apple has no idea who owns the machine. You could have walked into a retail store and bought it with cash. Or bought it used on Craigslist. In that blank state the machine is wide open, including wide open to be enrolled in Find My with Activation Lock. That's exactly how it is supposed to work. The only way it could be otherwise is if the server did what people are falsely claiming it does: maintain a big database that indicates who is the registered owner of each machine thereby preventing someone from maliciously enrolling a non-enrolled machine. (And FYI a non-enrolled machine is not constantly checking in with the server... that only happens during restore.) This is just another kind of CAP-like theorem situation. No one can provide anti-theft locking capability without making a tradeoff. Any sort of anti-theft feature must choose one of these strategies: 1. Trivial bypass via firmware wipe, making the feature useless. 2. Require a central database tracking ownership (think car titles), which is the dystopian world people hate 3. Physical possession of a stolen and non-enrolled machine allows the thief to enroll the machine (this case). Looks identical to a non-enrolling person selling to an enrolling buyer. Overriding the anti-theft system must be a high bar otherwise social engineering or malicious employee attacks become a significant weakness. Even if you provide proof-of-purchase there is no way to know if you sold the machine to someone else then stole it back from them in which case breaking the activation lock is helping a scammer. Providing opt-out is either #1 or #2 above. If you don't register that opt-out in a central database then it would likely be easy to bypass with a firmware wipe which leads back to square one. Just about the only alternative I can think of is a fusible link system where the first person to setup the machine can choose "Do not allow anti-theft" and that blows a fuse. That sure will piss off buyers of used machines when they find out the first owner made a permanent choice on their behalf.

PeterisP 3y ago

Having a phone stolen is a massive inconvenience, and it used to happen on large scale. The main way to reduce the risk of that (which actually works) is by targeting the motivation of the thieves by making the stolen device nearly worthless for resale or reuse - i.e. literally making both the device and its parts unusable even for a semi-skilled operator of a pawn shop buying large quantities of stolen phones. It's not that my specific information is so worth protecting, but that there is a social benefit as if everyone's phones are nearly worthless to steal, then the thefts go way down.