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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 understa

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.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    > 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. Kind of, but you can’t really do that more than once, so it makes for a bad business.

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.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  > 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. Kind of, but you can’t really do that more than once, so it makes for a bad business.