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8 Mar 2025 | 18
Apple's top-secret iBoot firmware source code spills onto GitHub for some insane reason
The confidential source code to Apple's iBoot firmware in iPhones, iPads and other iOS devices has leaked into a public GitHub repo. The closed-source code is top-secret, proprietary, copyright Apple, and yet has been quietly doing the rounds between security researchers and device jailbreakers on Reddit for four or so months …
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Thursday 8th February 2018 13:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
@boltar
Oh Boltar, life is full of depressing things all around us so sometimes it's nice to do something silly that even if only a few see the funny side then it's worth it. If people didn't do that we would live in a world devoid of humour. and humour is one of the best escapes from the drudgery that can be life.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
"If people didn't do that we would live in a world devoid of humour. and humour is one of the best escapes from the drudgery that can be life."
I thought it was a link to some code but it was a naff 80s pop song instead! Ha ha ha! Hilarious!! OMG is there a doctor in the house, my sides have split!!!
It was amusing for about 5 minutes the first time around 10 years ago, but hey, if thats your level of humour then good on you. You probably also enjoy Mrs Browns Boys and piss yourself laughing at crazy frog videos too, However some of us have more sophisticated tastes. HTH.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
So your more of a high brow humour man, eh?
How about this?
A programmers wife tells him: "Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen." The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread.
or we could go for this?
Did you hear about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
Lighten up please, I also can't stand Mrs Browns Boys or crazy frog.
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Friday 9th February 2018 05:42 GMT Someone Else
Oh Boltar, life is full of depressing things all around us so sometimes it's nice to do something silly that even if only a few see the funny side then it's worth it. If people didn't do that we would live in a world devoid of humour. and humour is one of the best escapes from the drudgery that can be life.
And, it is currently the only antidote to Herr Lügenführer Trump.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:22 GMT lglethal
Re: My device - I'll jail break it if I want to ...
@Lost all faith
I'm kinda interest why you think that should be the case. A store by its definition is there to sell things. Mostly third party programs. If Apple said you cant buy official Apple things after jailbreaking, thats fine thats a company decision. But saying you cant buy a third party's products because you did something they dont like seems unwarranted and excessive.
Not an apple user but just curious...
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:36 GMT peter_dtm
Re: My device - I'll jail break it if I want to ...
Um; no.
Apple’s AppStore - Apple’s rules.
Nothing to stop you (or anyone else) writing Apple Hardware based Apps and offering them for sale/giveaway. Just Apple won’t let you do it through their Apple AppStore
Of course you may have non disclosure issues if you write for the real Apple AppStore; so you may have to make a decision to either play in APPLE’s AppStore under their T&C - or play in some one else’s AppStore. You may have problems getting any ‘Footfall’ though & you may find no one wants to play in your AppStore - especially if you can not/will not warrant your apps as malicious code free
Your device - jail break it; run it over; feed it to a great white shark - whatever floats your boat. But don’t claim Apple stops you - or prevents you from downloading any old piece of dodgy code if you leave their rather safer walled garden. You just won’t be allowed to use APPLE utilities/web sites/AppStores to do so. But then that is the point you appear to be missing - Apple OWN the infrastructure; you can play - or not - if you want to. See what happens if you get any piece of equipment modified by no approved ‘fixers’ if you then complain to the OEM that it is bust
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Thursday 8th February 2018 18:01 GMT teknopaul
Re: My device - I'll jail break it if I want to ...
Your right, we dont need fair use rules, let the corps make up what ever rules they like as long as they get rich, we consumers dont matter.
We all have the the right to stop using the Internet if we dont want to be guided by megacorp round their walled garden.
Apple got away with loads of stuff by being niche provider for those willing to pay the idiot-tax. Not sure that applies any more.
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Friday 9th February 2018 21:16 GMT Wayland
Re: My device - I'll jail break it if I want to ...
Peter DTM, getting apps outside of the Apple Store is so discouraged there is practically no market except for very determined people wanting very useful tools. So yes there is something stopping you.
Compare that with Windows where you can download anything from anywhere and install it.
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Friday 9th February 2018 17:38 GMT Oh Homer
Re: "the right to prevent your access to the store"
Bollocks.
If you buy a broom from the hardware store, then replace the head with a better one, would you expect to be banned from the store as a result? Do you believe any such ban would be lawful and upheld by the courts?
No, what actually needs to be banned is using the pretext of "IP" to deny customers full access to their own legally purchased property. It's just another monopolisation device, and in every other context outside of "IP" la-la land, monopolisation is a criminal offence.
Section 2. Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 10:56 GMT lglethal
Re: "the right to prevent your access to the store"
Just as an aside - should Apple have to compensate the sellers on the App Store for potential lost sales when they ban jailbroken phones? Since Apple are the ones preventing access to the third party's apps through the official App Store, and there are no legitimate alternative stores for iphones app sellers to use, it seems reasonable to me that if Apple takes the unilateral decision to ban a portion of iphone users from their store they should have to compensate sellers for lost revenue.
Thoughts?
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Thursday 8th February 2018 09:44 GMT Steve Davies 3
Is it Legit?
Quote
Fun thing about the DMCA: it required Apple to state, under penalty of perjury, that the iBoot source code was legit:
All it needs is for the code to have been written by Apple. The Copyright statements are enough to get it taken down. It does not have to be the real boot code... but probably is.
We may never know. Apple is probably changing the boot code as we comment (or may have done already) and as the majority of Fanbois update their Apple toys I would not expect their to be much of a risk of mass hacking but it is interesting none the less.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 09:57 GMT Naselus
Re: Is it Legit?
Yeah, I wouldn't consider it a global IT security issue. But it may be indicative of some insiders at Apple resisting the fruity firm's notorious internal police-state-style setup. Apple's team structure and corporate culture is more secretive, compartmentalized and restrictive than most intelligence agencies, and many of the engineers have only really put up with it as long as the tech remained exciting to work with.
Endlessly iterating the same 4-5 basic product lines gets dull quickly, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the rank-and-file techies are getting fed up with the relatively poor pay and relatively bad working conditions compared to the other tech giants (while still being markedly better than 99% of the world's population have to put up with). And Tim Cook ain't Steve Jobs; people will put up with more shit to work with one of the really big names in technology from the late 20th century (even if he was an asshole) than they will working for an identikit corporate type.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 11:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Is it Legit?
Having now glanced at the code, it does appear to be legit and intact. Includes pretty much everything you need to make a working build.
Heck, even has documentation for fuzzing!
I'd say with almost complete certainty that this is a real leak, and is complete without missing anything.
Anon because, well yeah can't let Apple know I have it!
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Thursday 8th February 2018 12:33 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: Is it Legit?
All it needs is for the code to have been written by Apple. The Copyright statements are enough to get it taken down. It does not have to be the real boot code... but probably is.
I agree. This was my first thought when I read the statement by "Karl". But as you say, it probably is.
I'd also be willing to suspect that most of it(1) is still in any new iPhone/iPad you could buy today - bootloader code tends, in my experience, to be much more stable (in the sense of frequency of changes) than OS core and especially application code.
(1) Except the 32-bit assembler parts on an iPhone X - its processor can't run 32-bit code, they say.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 10:42 GMT Joe Harrison
why
Seriously, why do people pay (what I consider to be) a ridiculous amount of money for a computing device when the manufacturer openly admits how hard they work to lock you out of it. Security is supposed to keep hostiles out, not to keep you out after you just paid getting on for a thousand quid.
I can see some benefits of a trusted platform for some people using some applications, but it's just wrong that you can't turn it off.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 11:51 GMT oldrusty
Re: why
That because they haven't quite figured it all out yet, they're still trying to understand all the chinks and kinks and when your talking about a load of guys all sitting there trying to watch the population from a Windows desktop, then there's bound to be a few minor issues.
Democratic law makers are still befuddled and confused - bless!
Let's clear the AIR and dispel there confusion, firstly the whole issue of lawful intercepts. It's truly the case that you should be very careful what you wish for, because those powers that they crave and covert do not translate into powers they can use against the population they directly translate into powers the population may use against the State.
If you take the time to do the actual research you gain a better grasp of what's really going on and what it's really all about. The whole issue of the C Library and the issue of Objective C is far better understood when you realize why some people might Object or Objectify the C source code.
You see in foreign states that are controlled by the iron grip of the "Communist" block, the party itself is not all powerful, you have to remember they are elected into office by the people on behalf of the people and therefore it's those people who placed them in power that hold them to account for there actions.
1> The issue of illegal wiretaps, yes it's illegal but it never stopped them wanting to do it in the first place, regardless of the fact, that the people who begged for it will find themselves being the ones so deeply watched by the very electorate that placed them in power. This is what is meant by Political stupidity, the very anti-thesis of control. After all just ask yourself one simple question "how do these capabilities, translate into something that you yourself can control when they are capabilities that where never designed for you in the first place?"
Do you believe these Agencies have any iota or idea? Of course they don't, all they care about is preening about catching bad guys, yet here we see the bad guys, being the very elected representatives, put in place by the People acting against the very will of the People, preening about Special Source collections. There truly is nothing special about where the source of those capabilities came from. They come from the "Communist" block offered out as a special service to the "Democratic" block to spy on the population in a most abusive pattern of abuse that has been going for decades.
And they are still clueless, going on about needing a Capability which is not a Capability designed with them in mind, it was designed for the people to hold the very political authority to account for its actions and when they finally realize that, they're actually terrified that it's not there Secret Service or there Secret Police that will be listening to there private conversations but the very People who placed them in Office and that very idea is what terrifies them. Because when your making a private phone call and you offer or you accept a Bribe would you feel comfortable knowing that the People who put you in Office know all about what you just did?
The answer is of course not, they have the illusion of control, the illusion that it's intended for them and when they find out it's not, they become deeply fearful of what will be uncovered and dragged into the light of day and laid bare for the entire world to look at.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 12:37 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: "in [..] the "Communist" block, the party itself is not all powerful"
I think you have a rather nebulous grasp of what the Communist block is, and of how elections are held in those kinds of countries.
You might want to research that, for educational purposes, of course.
For example, are you going to maintain that Putin got elected for the people ? Did you actually follow his political career ?
I think not.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 12:58 GMT oldrusty
Re: "in [..] the "Communist" block, the party itself is not all powerful"
Actually yes, I did follow his political career with avid interest, when he say's "I didn't do this!" he is correct, he didn't do it, he's not the one securing multi-million dollar loans and then refusing to pay them back. He's the one sitting there listening to people prattle on about the evils of the Russian population and evil Russian hackers when in fact Russia is blameless and a lot of Russian hackers contribute to Open Source all the time, it has far more to do with the Ukraine and people should instead direct there query to the CEO of Wall-Street and Citibank and the former owner of the Observer newspaper.
Media tycoons, that probably made the vast majority of there money via blackmail and grand larceny pointing there finger at everybody else going "they did it" praying we'll not look to closely at there own finances and higher interest rates in off-shore banking.
However you have to laugh, that although the bank lent them loads, the chances are they'll never lend them a penny again.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 10:11 GMT Pascal Monett
@oldrusty
You had to drag Ukraine into this discussion, didn't you ? I see, Russia is pure as driven snow, it is the rest of them that are evil.
Of course.
Go tell that to Anna Politkovskaya. Or would you prefer some of her friends instead ?
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: why
Because having tried 3 generations of android phone and been sick of the lack of updates I tried to avoid Apple. I then bough a windows 10 phone, great device at first but ended up with less and less apps I wanted and did become less reliable over time. I've finally joined the rest of the family with an iphone and guess what - it just works.
Don't even talk to me about using developer builds, several of the apps I want to use will detect that a droid has been rooted and will then refuse to execute.
Mi wife was happily using her IPhone 3GS until last year, during the time she owned it I've changed phones 4 times, It looks like her iPhone 6 will last at least another 2-3 years and I'll use the iPhone 7 I bought until it stops receiving IO|S updates. All this and it actually works well with the google play apps and devices, something which was never available on the windows phone.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 11:07 GMT Hans 1
And wonder what else has leaked from Cupertino's highly secretive idiot-tax operations.
Apple could not be reached for immediate comment. ®
Cupertino's highly secretive idiot-tax operations.
Apple could not be reached for immediate comment.
So, some poor El'Reg scribe calls Apple's operations idiot-tax and wonders why Cupertino fails to respond in time ...
Note, I think idiot-tax is both quite suitable and funny in this context, but to expect them to get back to you ? Hmmmm ... you could have at least tried to bury that in the article somewhere! Sad, just as you managed to break the ice, last few papers I read here about Apple they had actually gotten back with a comment ... now you are all back to square 1 ...
Keep Biting the hand that feeds IT!
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Friday 9th February 2018 09:56 GMT Mooseman
Re: Yeah
"its normally total ******* (insert expletive of choice) drive Mercs"
Ah, no. You're thinking of Beemers and Audis. I had a 20 year old S500 W12, it was lovverly. Went like a rocket when I needed it to (mainly to annoy boy racers) but the rest of the time it wafted me along in silent luxury. Just don't look at the eye-watering fuel consumption.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 16:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Yeah
Just, FIAT is still alive and saved Chrysler from bankruptcy as well. But I no longer see many British brands, but those sold abroad and rebooted after they utterly failed to deliver modern cars...
Marchionne anyway steered FIAT away from some old habits inherited by Agnelli family bad management, including the idea that other brands they bough to hinder competition should not shade their family one.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 13:20 GMT Hans 1
Re: Yeah
Honestly, the 2001 Peugeot 106 I have, 1.1L petrol, is indestructible ... I did 200km on three spark plugs, changed the lot and it was back to normal ... I have had the car for 11 years, now, bought it second hand at the time (with a new timing belt), and have changed the timing belt once ... ok, I change oil/filters /tires regularly ... now, after eleven years, the first universal joint went south... apart from that, it just keeps going ... and you still see 205's on the roads ... The Renault I bought at the same time and which was younger, broke its fanbelt on the motorway, which displaced the timing belt less than two years after acquisition and, finally. blew its engine 5 years later ... The MG F my sister had blew its engine, after 3 attempts to change the timing belt ...my other sister had a Rover 200 and my dad was very upset when she asked him to change the spark plugs, not easy to get at, WTF ????? I have a 22 yo Z3 in the garage, still going strong, the wife managed the rip the exhaust off three times, OK, Marseille roads have deep holes and the wife, out of exasperation (her claim) just drove into the holes ... the car is "lowered" , so not a good idea ... no way I can get that into her head and I bought that one for her (so my fault, I know) ... My dad had a W123 Lang, eight seats, that thing went on for decades on end ....British cars suck, always have, I am a Brit and it saddens me ... Italian cars are the worst crap on the roads, Volvo's are driven by idiots who need military-grade armor to survive car crashes THEY cause ... BMW drivers are usually as arrogant arseholes as Audi drivers, except for BMW Z'ers ... Mercedes drivers are usually pretty civilized ... if you ask me, you don't and that is Ok ... I am an old fart, as you can guess from this comment ...
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Thursday 8th February 2018 11:41 GMT Hans 1
Re: Yeah
And, FIAT's have Fehler In Allen Teilen and just like Ferraris catch fire unexpectedly. Mercedes have a reliability track record ... In the 80's, their cars even had a breakdown every 900 000km, on average. Sure, it has gotten worse since, but they are still so much more reliable than anything that comes out of Italy.
The equivalent cannot be said about iPhones, though ;-) After two years, they calculate pi all day (or something silly like that) to drain the battery and get the punter to order a new shiny ...
Of all brands, FIAT ? ROFL ...
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Thursday 8th February 2018 12:16 GMT Hans 1
Re: Yeah
Checkout Mercedes W123, that beast was the most reliable car ever produced, by far and wide, the best car all over ... if you search in google for W123 and "erste Panne" (first breakdown) you get various reports, some rate it over 900 000km, others 850 000 ... basically, right up there with trucks ... so much so Mercedes-Benz mechanics were complaining, back in the day ;-)
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Thursday 8th February 2018 21:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Yeah
"Checkout Mercedes W123, that beast was the most reliable car ever produced, by far"
Volvo got a reputation based on the round-radiator models. Rolls-Royce got a reputation based on pre-war models (that's WW1).
But a general statement that Mercs do 900 000km before breaking down is exaggerating a bit. One German company I worked with described them as "200/200 cars" - that is to say, they would cruise at 200kph and they would do 200 000km before ceasing to be reliable, but not that they would do that 200 000km at 200kph all the time.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 13:12 GMT diodesign
Re: Cupertino's highly secretive idiot-tax operations
I dunno man, I spent 80 bucks on an Apple wireless mouse for my work MacBook Pro, and I sure feel like I've been taxed like an idiot. Same goes for the RAM and other accessories I've bought for my home Mac gear over the many many many many
many many many many many
many
many many many many many many many many years.
C.
(Yes, El Reg hacks use Macs. That's part of the joke. We also have a new rule that you have to split your time between macOS / Linux and Windows, so we get the same daily experience of crap technology our readers face.)
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cupertino's highly secretive idiot-tax operations
"We also have a new rule that you have to split your time between macOS / Linux and Windows, so we get the same daily experience of crap technology our readers face"
I feel your pain. I'm made to support Windows 8.1 machines at work sometimes. I prefer 7, and can live with 10, but everytime I open up a remote session to Windows 8 I die a little more inside.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 16:35 GMT bazza
Re: Cupertino's highly secretive idiot-tax operations
(Yes, El Reg hacks use Macs. That's part of the joke. We also have a new rule that you have to split your time between macOS / Linux and Windows, so we get the same daily experience of crap technology our readers face.)
Er, you should add Solaris, FreeBSD and OS/2 to your list; I fear you're missing out on the adventure of a lifetime!
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Saturday 10th February 2018 12:39 GMT Hans 1
Re: @Hans 1
@David
No, I simply think people's sarcasm detector segfaulted on the "note" ... I was starting to get a bit miffed @el reg because they started playing all nice with Apple, so much so, Apple started responding to requests for comment ... I thought that was against the "Biting the hand that feed IT" mantra ... anyway ... the icon on that post clearly indicates that el reg are back on track ... and idiot tax, honestly, hilarious ...
you must be new here" ? I dunno, sometimes have a silver badge, I think, I don't care, I hate uniforms, decorations and things like that ... I dunno how the system works, if downvotes count toward badges ... either way, I don't care, downvote as much as you like, folks, I am happy to see El Reg back on track with the mantra ... and Idiot Tax it is ;-)
Icon: The wife's gone with the kids for the weekend, so I can have more beer than usual and comment on el'reg;-)
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Thursday 8th February 2018 11:45 GMT Anonymous South African Coward
What really happened to those people who peddled WindowsNT and Win2k source code back in the day?
All the two articles do was to waffle on about the leaked source code, but not a peep about what happened to the people who've had a hand in distributing and peddling said code...
No matter what you do, what security measures you put up, somebody will always find a way to sneak code out of the backdoor.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 13:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
"What really happened to those people who peddled WindowsNT and Win2k source code back in the day?"
Bugger-all.
I got a toothless nastygram via my ISP for the crime of just being in the torrent, signed by Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith under penalty of perjury.
Which was rather odd, because when the torrent finished downloading, it turned out to be a gay porn film featuring hunky German bikers, and not a zip of the Win2k source after all.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:46 GMT Naselus
"it turned out to be a gay porn film featuring hunky German bikers, and not a zip of the Win2k source after all."
No waiiiii, I got that one from a mis-named stream too. Not Win2k, though. Lets just say that all my friends were very surprised when I told them what I thought of V for Vendetta.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Spelunking the Win2K/NT codebases
Well the whole code base ( minus network stack - basically BSD) and build scripts where there but unless you were a very experienced Win16/32 and os systems programmer it was not going to make much sense. But the people like me who were both were unlikely to do much with it apart from use it for reference. Which we did.
Did learn some interesting things from the code base. Such as not only does MS lie to outsiders but there is a chain of lying inside MS management too. I remember some very specific technical statements made by various top people at MS over the years which were proved false by the source code and the call chain. And knowing how MS internal politics works the people at the top must have been lied to by those below. In MS bullshit not only flows down the organizational chain but up it too.
The other fun fact was that not only was the source code for the whole security stack API's in the wild but also the code for generating all the various certificates etc. Even the code that generated the various OS serial numbers. Product key etc.
So much for a secure Win32 machine. No such thing.
Lots of fun nooks and crannies in the two 300M plus source codebase. The source code for MineSweeper for example. Oh, and IE. Still quite a bit of Spyglass code kicking around. It was the NT4 and Win2k/XP transition codebases. Between the two, plus the DDK you had a complete build. Did partial builds as an experiment and as it all seemed to be in there but could not be arsed to build the whole thing.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 12:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Couple of assumptions worth challenging at some point?
1. That hiding your source code somehow improves your security (there are valid competitive reasons why you may want to hide some source code at a certain point in time, but that's a different consideration).
2. That locking users out of their own devices is always a good idea. Discourage by all means, make it contrived enough so as to prevent unsophisticated users from shooting themselves in the foot, educate them not to root their devices under anyone else's request but only of their own accord, tell them that here be dragons. Then give the owner root.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 12:48 GMT Pascal Monett
Closed source code has a legitimate place in the market. As a developer, if I manage to code an application that has a market to sell to, I do not see any interest for me in posting the code on GitHub or anywhere else because that would remove any incentive to pay me for the application.
If, however, I want to create an application with the firm intention of giving away the code to ensure maximum adoption, I have the freedom of doing so.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that closed source is not the way to go in future for creating operating systems. Our computing platforms must be managed by things we can trust, and the only way to trust them is to have them based on open-source platforms.
Open-source platforms that will run the applications we need or want, whatever source the code is.
As for giving the owner root, on a PC I totally agree because I've been using one since the first IBM PC 8086. On a consumer item though, I can totally understand that no manufacturer wants to do that because customer complaints are already hard enough without allowing the clueless lusers the ability to royally fuck their hardware up and them come back complaining - which we all know they will do.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 21:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
> Closed source code has a legitimate place in the market.
Of course it does. We tend to run closed source until we have enough of a competitive advantage then we release most of our code, save for the bits that are more embarrassing than a French car.
But from a security point of view, closed source buys you sweet fuck all.
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Friday 9th February 2018 05:15 GMT jimbo60
really?
Re: Pascal Monett
"Our computing platforms must be managed by things we can trust, and the only way to trust them is to have them based on open-source platforms."
Really? Do you have some sort of realistic basis for that claim? Recent history of Linux does not exactly support that premise. Just because anyone CAN inspect the source for flaws does not mean that someone DID. At least not someone ready and willing to share the finds back to the open source community. So in that regard open source that enables experts to find and hoard flaws for nefarious purposes makes it less secure.
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Friday 9th February 2018 08:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
"closed source is not the way to go in future for creating operating systems. "
"Closed source" doesn't mean it can't be accessed and inspected by third parties. Windows code is available for inspection if you meet the requirements. I've often used commercial third party libraries with came with full source code.
It is still "closed" and not "open" in the sense you can't publish, resell or copy it, and you may be under an NDA.
Stallman & C. advocated for a much broader definition of "open" - giving it a meaning that you have to "share" it, and in the case of GPL, in a very strict way.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 13:15 GMT Lee D
Cool.
I work in a school and we have a bunch of old manky iPad Mini's and the old iPad 2's that nobody would touch with a bargepole nowadays. Would be nice if I could convert them to run Android or something more useful now that they've been pushed onto an unsuitably high iOS version that slows them to a crawl (even pre- the battery life etc. issues that are now common knowledge).
I mean... I wouldn't pay for them, but I have a bunch of them that are going to go in the bin otherwise (literally not worth enough to bother selling them) and if I could turn them into digital-signage or a CCTV monitor, at least they would have got to do something useful for once in their life.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 14:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
The dangers of a monoculture ..
"The bootloader is highly protected, is stored in an encrypted form on devices, and is key to maintaining the integrity of the operating system."
Is there any way of scrambling the boot process such that each device is slightly different, rendering generic malware unable to run on different devices. Or at least put a hardware switch on the device then renders the core components read-only.
The Evolution of Security 'What can nature tell us about how best to manage our risks?'
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Thursday 8th February 2018 18:58 GMT Lee D
Re: The dangers of a monoculture ..
Put a hardware switch on - great, now you can NEVER fix a bug in the bootloader.
Encrypt everything with a unique key? You still need to store the key somewhere and then decrypt and execute pretty much the same code for everything. The key being different doesn't help. Pretty much this is the TPM solution. It doesn't stop things being hacked, it just makes support, troubleshooting and repairs/replacement almost impossible (there's a reason that your Apple store will tend to bin your phone and just give you another of the same model).
None of that stops people finding flaws in the bootloader, attacking it, thereby getting access to things they shouldn't and using that to subvert the computer.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 22:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The dangers of a monoculture ..
The benefits of an open source monoculture.
Imagine the freedom if android had a near 100% monopoly, where it didn't matter who you got your handset from, all your apps and data would just work... You don't like Samsung's 2018 model, then fine buy a sony or LG..
That's where we a today, and it s great. The only losers are apple owners, getting shatfted at every opportunity by apple, charging multiple times for the same app on different types of devices simply because they can...
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Friday 9th February 2018 08:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Imagine the freedom if android had a near 100% monopoly, "
So what was wrong when Windows had a near 100% monopoly? Even then what computer you bought didn't matter, all your apps and data just worked.... you didn't like an IBM? You could buy a Dell or HP, or even build one yourself.
Is Android really open source? Actually no, the big Google binary blob that allows for critical services makes it a proprietary system anyway. Nor anybody fixes bugs in old releases of Android and delivers them. While if any fork was successful it wouldn't be "a near 100% monopoly".
So it's fine just because you can read the code to get asleep?
It's very funny how MS haters turned into Google worshiper - when the two companies act exactly in the same way - just Google has been far better at brainwashing people into believing its monopoly is good.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 21:36 GMT StargateSg7
I simply DO NOT HAVE TO CARE!!!!!
I have a RTNX phone and Workstation Computer --- NOT iOS, MAcOS, WIndows 10, Linux,Android or Windows Mobile !!!! It's a Fully Custom Real-time HARD 4 Millisecond Interrupt OS -- NOTHING ON EARTH can touch it with full ALWAYS ON Shor's Resistant Cryptography onboard for ALL in-memory and storage media operations and datafile storage!
We don't even use ARM, Intel or AMD chips --- We use our own designs! Plus it's REALLY NICE to have FULL 128-bit Integer and Real number bit-widths on EVERYTHING! It's ALSO rather nice to have unlimited system RAM into the Petabyte+ range!
PFFFFFTTTTT Phooey on you Apple!!!! We could not care less!!! We'd rather design, build and use our own hardware and software anyways. We even make our own displays at 8k and 16k resolutions!
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Friday 9th February 2018 12:28 GMT Naselus
Don't engage with it. Opinion remains divided whether it's some kind of joke Bombastic Bob sock-puppet account, a poor amanfrommars1 tribute act, or a Russian trollbot AI training system.
Opinion also remains divided over whether those three things are really separate and distinct categories, or just three descriptions of the same thing.
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Thursday 8th February 2018 22:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Apple Code Now Public........Woo-Hoo.....
So......you've also got all the (latest) header files, anything mentioned in the header files, the compiler settings, the Makefile, and all the other paraphernalia needed to understand exactly what's going on.
*
Maybe I just don't understand.....but does one C source file actually tell anyone anything useful?
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Friday 9th February 2018 01:13 GMT martinusher
Sigh....Secrecy is not Security
Keeping widely distributed code secret is a poor way to secure it. In theory you should be able to open source this code and it would still be secure. In practice it doesn't hurt to add some more work to the reverse engineer's task but the general rule holds -- if you're relying on secret source code for security then sooner or later that code will leak out and you will no longer be secure.
Incidentally, you can actually tell a lot about what that code does from the include files listed in the header.
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Friday 9th February 2018 08:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Sigh....Secrecy is not Security
Sorry, what is valid for cryptographic algorithms is not valid for any piece of code. In cryptography you still have a secret that is the key(s).
In many other fields, part of the security is exactly not knowing exactly how it works, because you have bot a "simple" data like a key able to protect it all.
Never extrapolate something outside its context - it may cease to be valid.
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Friday 9th February 2018 05:34 GMT eldakka
> It can be abused to jailbreak iOS devices to install unofficial customizations and applications.
I'm sorry, why is jail-breaking or installing unofficial customizations an abuse?
It's my device, and I'll do what I want with it, from painting it hot-pink, replacing the battery when it dies or the screen when I drop it, putting my own custom OS on it, up to and including covering it with thermite and igniting it.
It is an abuse by the vendor to stop me from doing those things to my device.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
