willstrafach

Your comment contains an insult with no additional substance to back up the claim.

There is a finite amount of code on the system. That code would also include any functions related to stenography or remote activation and could be easily called out. However, do not exist in iOS. Anything can happen in the future, and those future versions can also be examined to find out if any such functionality was added.

You can sniff the network traffic.

Untrue. You can sniff outgoing connections and reverse engineer whatever you’d like (I sure have and am glad to have a full understanding of everything going out).

Usually “None” is an available option for payment method. This does depend on your region though.

This data is on-device precisely to avoid the usual route of uploading it to the cloud. None of that is uploaded to Apple.

> 3.) It can only see IMSIs when a phone first connects. I don't think the IMSI is sent when making a call or transferring data.

I believe this is correct, in fact (someone please correct me if I've got this wrong?) it looks as if this open source tool being cited is incorrectly labelling TMSIs as IMSIs.

This is Rx-only though, so the target device(s) cannot forced down to 2G.

> timagine adtech companies starting a PR war against Apple's closed garden system, arbitrary app store decisions, labor conditions (I'm sure we can find some dirt somewhere in their vast business) to get laws enacted to regulate them on what they can do and not do.

That sounds nice though.

Time to wake up then. When you log in on this page, both temporary deactivation as well as true deletion are both also offered.

The implant you describe sounds much like this:

https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/nsa-ant-catalog/usb/FIREWALK.jpg

This is incorrect.

No, this was for a locked iPhone. They were after encrypted data-at-rest. Warantless surveillamce would not apply, as they had a warrant - I believe - seeing as they went after the iCloud data and said it was not helpful (No backup stored there).

Additionally, an OIG report seems to suggest they did not attempt their usual avenue for acquiring access tools in order to get in, instead trying to force a legal precedent.

My device is experiencing this strange problem as well. Glad to know it is not just me.

This will be available in the future, but was deemed too complicated for most mainstream users.

The initial default will be to simply offer a button called “Protect” and app handles all the rest.

This will be a commercial service, in order to fund ongoing research efforts allowing us to quickly discover and block all possible forms of tracking, phishing, and other malicious traffic.

That said, in the future, lists will be published for folks with the ability and time to operate a Pi-Hole for themselves, if preferred.

Approving entitlements is exceptionally rare honestly.

The only app I have found this happen with is Uber:

https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-iphone-app-secret-acces...

Not certain what you mean about the IP address, but for signing it, they would need to bundle a key and that could be extracted.

It is a genuinely tricky challenge from their perspective.

Do any of these companies at least take security seriously, considering the extreme sensitivity of the massive amounts of data they collect?

I personally believe this is unlikely, because then the firms paying for this data will not be so sure that the information is legitimate, whereas collecting directly from user devices makes fraud more difficult.

Respectfully, one goal of doing this research was to shine a light on those who are engaging in these practices, so that users who dislike it can potentially find alternatives.

This is a good thing for any apps who do things right.

For iOS, there will be: https://guardianapp.com

Also, we will either provide a searchable app index, or freely share findings/info with parties such as Exodus (This has not been fully decided as of yet).

To be somewhat fair in this case, the TC author got an advance copy of the reporting and data in order to get some company responses included, so I suppose there is a value-add in that respect.

Anonymous tips accepted at hello@sudosecuritygroup.com

> Niche startup idea, VPN for your mobile device that can analyze and block traffic.

This is indeed what we (originators of this location tracking research) do.

It is totally awesome that you are not doing anything creepy, but I hope you can understand that some folks are going to be more wary nowadays and that is not a bad thing IMO.

The firms would then have a much harder time knowing if the information is genuinely from end users, if they no longer collect directly from user devices.

Ours (guardianapp) does exactly this as well, although exclusively for iOS. We are using the data we glean from the static + runtime analysis for an upcoming mobile firewall app but are open to other interesting opportunities.

Please feel free to send a message at any time, even if you would just like to compare notes on all this (hello@sudosecuritygroup.com).

A lot of work went into rooting out these trackers, what data they sent, and what apps they were in. We used a combination of static code analysis for each, runtime analysis (eg. Corellium), and network packet capture/analysis.

The good news is that only that last part is required if you would like to try this, now that the commonly used hostnames are published.

Folks can add the full list to a system such as Pi-Hole, and if they notice any hits for the listed servers, they can then route their device traffic through a tool such as Bettercap or Burp Suite in order to discover the offending app(s) and what information they are sending.

No, it does not.