Ex-Apple engineer lifts lid on Uncle Sam's top-secret plan to turn customized iPod into 'Geiger counter'

A former Apple engineer has spilled the beans on what he's described as a top-secret project Cupertino conducted with the US government in the 2000s. David Shayer, a former engineer with Apple's iPod outfit, this week recounted the yarn of how he came to build a custom bit of kit for the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2005 …

[lglethal]

I can neither confirm nor deny that I have signed the Official Secrets Act. However, if you ask, I'll be forced to tell you to mind your own business, and that even if I had signed, which is not to be taken as an admission that I may have signed it, I wouldn't tell you if I had signed it or not. So there.

Is that clear enough? Hmmm... Do you here some helicopters?

[I ain't Spartacus]

An actor on Kermode and Mayo's film program was asked if the rumour was true that he'd be in an upcoming blockbuster. Think it might have been Nolan's Dark Knight. Which he denies. They playfully ask again. He dodges the question. They ask a third time, and he says, "Look. I can't say. I've signed a contract that says I can't tell anyone." Oops. Nailed. Rookie mistake. Cue much mirth and hilarity at his expense.

I haven't signed the OSA by the way. I've had it tatooed on my back in glow-in-the-dark letters so the aliens know that I can't answer their questions.

[Pete 2]

Supposition!

> a customized version of the iconic Apple media player that could not only deliver music and video, but also hold other hardware. The purpose, Shayer reckons, was to create a discrete Geiger counter that could also pass as a media player.

So it was only a guess that the iPod would host a radiation detector. That function doesn't sound very plausible to me. Would they go around "the city" waving their iPod at people, or what? Though it would be a good cover story.

Given that an iPod is primarily a storage device, my guess would be that it would make an innocuous bug. Since iPods already had a microphone, there wouldn't be much point making them audio bugs. However due to being commonplace, they wouldn't raise much suspicion if spotted lying around somewhere - an office or laboratory, perhaps. Somewhere with a lot of, say, radio activity (as opposed to radioactivity). Especially as WiFi was starting to be popular around 2005.

As for a modus operandi, we all know about "lost and found" thumbdrives. Devices that are left for unsuspecting but targetted individuals to find and plug into their computers out of curiosity. This could be similar, but less suspicious as it wouldn't need to be plugged in to anything. Just have the "mark" find an iPod that looked lost, pick it up, take it into their secure work environment and it sniffs the internal WiFi. Even inside shielded building.

And better still, it plays music!

[xeroks]

Re: Supposition!

think you're right about the geiger counter being a plausible lie for children. Less sure about it being a simple bug. In 2005, there many ways of doing that without this level of complexity, but I suppose it would be useful if someone was liable to be searched for a wire.

Given they didn't come back, it may have been a general toolkit: that their software changes would have allowed for a variety of hardware.

[Dave 126]

Re: Supposition!

If you remember the fear of terrorist attacks of all sorts in 2005, a department given money to develop a disguised Geiger counter sounds plausible, especially since using roving mobile sensors is DARPAs stated MO.

Audio recording could be done on a 2005 era phone, and supply data back to base in real time.

So, why an iPod rather than a then-ubiquitous flip-phone? The iPod has greater internal volume to fit sensors, especially if the HDD is swapped for solid state (one assumes that high cost of solid state storage wouldn't have been an issue for the client, though the lack of disk noise might mark the iPod as suspect). In 2005, an iPod might be allowed into areas where a phone might not be. Or, it might be that someone waving an iPod around arouses less suspicion than someone waving a flip phone around.

An iPod wouldn't send data back to base in real time, but I guess the agents could plug it into a laptop whenever they returned to their vehicle.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Supposition!

"An iPod wouldn't send data back to base in real time"

Maybe radio transmission that was the extra hardware. Apple guy suggests something quite irrelevant to actual project? Thank him nicely and carry on.

[Peter2]

Re: Supposition!

I can think of a lot of useful uses of being able to wander around with an hidden Geiger counter. Bearing in mind that this is from 2005 and the whole Iranian reactor thing that's happened since it's not totally improbable and in fact it'd be a rather handy toy for nuclear inspectors to have.

In fact, it'd be a lovely toy to add to every iPhone to create a live worldwide radiation survey, with hot spots automatically flagged for investigation.

However, to be honest as you say once you've got an iPod modified to leave empty room for a payload then one imagines that it's not beyond the wit of man to modify it to contain a different payload. I'd imagine that the OS wouldn't know what you were doing with it; probably the most integration with the OS that you'd want is an on/off command.

[Dan 55]

Re: Supposition!

I guess this guy only did the 'hiding data' part. Others elsewhere in Apple did the 'read values from this widget' part, others did the 'new hardware design which leaves an x * y * z space', and others did the 'new screwholes inside the case here, here, and here' part.

If they all wake up in The Cube one day it'll be because this guy blabbed.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Supposition!

Would they go around "the city" waving their iPod at people, or what?

yeah , they'd be better housing it in one of those PKE detectors from Ghostbusters, much less suspicious and more room for the components

[Michael Habel]

Re: Supposition!

Since when did iPods have a mic? IIRC that was like a 60$ addon, from either Belkin, or Monster at the time. and, both stuck out like a pimple on an ass wort. then again I never saw much point in upgrading past my 3'ed Gen iPod either. So I don't know much about the metaloid "Classics".

[katrinab]

Re: Supposition!

Since the iPod Touch I think

[DS999]

If you're worried about someone bugging you

You take away ALL electronic equipment from them. Or even things that are not electronic but rather mechanical/complex like a Rolex.

Maybe it wasn't a geiger counter, but it sure wasn't to host a bug. There's no way even the dumbest security would allow people into something that shouldn't be recorded with an iPod.

And are you SURE it had a microphone? What for? The iPod Touch models might have since they were basically a cut down iPhone, but what would the rest need with a microphone? They didn't accept voice commands and didn't have any ability to record music, so it seems kind of pointless. Of course you could add one if you wanted to turn it into a bug, but you could add a tiny microphone to a button on your suit and stand a MUCH better chance of getting it by security unnoticed than putting it in an iPod.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re. iNuk

Actually I looked into doing this with "Step" pedometer counters as they were a convenient size and less likely to arouse suspicion.

Problem turned out to be making the sensor low power enough as the tube(s) typically needed 350V and though APDs were also

available they needed 100-200V making them even less likely to suit the task.

It would have worked with a single crystal Si photodiode but this wasn't sensitive enough.

Useful tip: there are now single chip HV supplies available based around EL driver technology, even I2C controlled.

AC because I got in enough trouble already for my "other" projects.

[amanfromMars 1]

:-)

Nice one, Shaun Nichols in San Francisco. Uncle Sam/Silicon Valley/Wall Street/Departments of Defence needs the likes of you.

[Dinanziame]

The cool thing is that he can say whatever he wants, and nobody can disprove it... Even the Geiger counter is just his assumption, it could be any piece of hardware, like a dumb hidden microphone secretly recording conversations.

[Chairman of the Bored]

I call BS

If you want to differentiate between materials, you need something with energy discrimination- a scintillation counter, not a Geiger counter. That implies a liquid or solid scintillator... No need for high voltage electronics and photomultiplier tubes these days, we have silicon photomultipliers. See:

https://www.hamamatsu.com/sp/hc/osh/sipm_webinar_1.10.pdf

But sensitivity varies directly as the volume of your scintillator. Something small enough to fit in a ipod will have very little volume and roughly the sensitivity of Helen Keller. Workable, but you need a lot of patience. Instead of wandering the city, you would be standing or lying still for tens of minutes to an hour until your pulse height discriminator has something to work with. Then you move another half meter. Unless you're pretending to sleep rough, this is not suspicious at all. Size matters.

My coat? The one with the zinc sulphide in the pocket.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I call BS

"a scintillation counter"

Point of information - gas proportional counter also does this. It was the first system in use in the QUB carbon dating lab. But in terms of volume and need for high voltages, not in this application.

[Chairman of the Bored]

Re: I call BS

Nice! Thanks

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I call BS

Primary counter was, IIRC, 1.5 litre Cu cylinder surrounded by a longer toroidal counter with multiple wires (at this remove in time I can't remember whether they were anodes or cathodes) in anti-coincidence. I think there might have been a shield between them possibly a mercury-filled lining for the anti-coincidence .

All several feet down in a brick-lined pit covered with a few sheets of old steel (have to avoid cobalt) and then concrete floor slabs to walk on. You can tell how long ago this was - they eventually also used the pit as a fire safe to hold backups of the punched cards.

The sample was converted to methane and was the actual counter filling, geologically old methane for the anti-coincidence ring filling.

And thanks for the extra info on solid state PMs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I call BS

Me too... heard it before except it was the mid 80s and involved a Sony Walkman which was modified to play one stereo track through both earphones to appear normal but the secret data was recorded on the other track. Supposedly made by the same genius that knobbled the leader in the Grand National one year by disguising an ultrasonic horn in a pair of binoculars. All to be found on Snopes I'm sure :-/

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I call BS

Yes, mucho $$$ and I did try to get samples but it was not simple.

The AD500-8 * 3 I found online do seem legit, though not the voltage I asked for.

https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/313/AD500-8-TO52-S1-14890.pdf

Incidentally my interests include hacking Bluetooth leeches so what about combining the two?

I could feasibly add a sensor in a suitably large earpiece hooked up to MIC IN powering the sensor with an HV85x and with two of them set to different energy levels this would make a passable directional indicator.

Anyone want some experimental data?

[Anonymous Coward]

The First Rule of OSA.......

NONE of you have signed the OSA, it's a law not a contract and it simply applies to you if you fit the correct criteria.

You might have signed a statement to the effect that they agree to abide by the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act, which if you had read it you would see that you really shouldn't be telling anyone that you are subject to it.

Ironically this is meant to be a reminder for you to understand the laws in which you are now subject to.

[Daedalus]

Hard reality

If you're looking for U235 you're out of luck, because it doesn't emit that much radioactivity that you can detect beyond a metre or so. Materials such as uranium ore contain radium which will emit gamma rays for your clicking pleasure, but pure uranium is dull dull dull. The half-life of U238 is half a billion years, which makes it great for dating rocks, but not for being detected on the street. I suppose you might pick up elevated levels of radon or something. If you do find yourself getting lots of clicks on your Geiger counter, you may have wandered into a heavily contaminated area, such as the one in the infamous incident of the incorrectly disposed-of gamma ray cancer treatment device. People took the contents home because they glowed in the dark.

[Stuart Halliday]

Re: Hard reality

Yeah, don't try it in Aberdeen.

One of the most natural radioactive cities in Britain....

[lglethal]

It's the old bait and switch...

They "talked" about needing space for extra hardware and the ability to write to the harddrive on their own, and they walked out with a custom version of iOS. But lets face it that was the plan all along! They just wanted what we all want - a version of iOS that doesn't make you use the bleedin' iTunes store!

[Neoc]

Meh - these days all you need to do is put some dark sticky tape over your camera lens and watch for the sensors on your camera to react to the radioactive decay.

Not as much around my town as I though there would be. But then again, I never go to try it next to an actual radioactive source (X-Ray, etc).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re. Meh

Takes your sticky tape and raises you extremely thin pyrolytic graphite.

Also makes the camera somewhat sensitive to alpha particles as well but only if the silicon is exposed.

Protip: WASH THE GRAPHITE first with acetone, and ideally Epoxy or light cure adhesive the graphite to make sure the sensor stays working. Long term exposure at short range tends to eat the sensor but you get to see individual flashes as the cells burn out.

For bonus points put a tiny blob of Ag doped ZnS directly onto one corner of the chip.or fragment of a suitable Indiglo (tm) or other EL sheet fragment having first tested it with alpha source to confirm that it glows.

AC but I can be reached on +44 778* 43*7+8

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio-Aktivität

Is using the geiger counter likely to have them thinking you're listening to this Kraftwerk track or vice versa?

[cortland]

Not exactly new now...

From the How To Geek site:

>>Android: While we’d hope you’d never need it, clever researchers have figured out how to turn the camera on your Android phone into a makeshift Geiger Counter with nothing more than an app and some black tape.

It’s not as versatile as a true Geiger Counter (it doesn’t measure as broad a spectrum) but for a free application that could be quickly deployed during an emergency to the hundreds of millions of smartphones floating around, it’s pretty awesome. From the app author’s web site: <<

https://www.howtogeek.com/103184/your-android-phone-can-do-double-duty-as-a-geiger-counter/