iPhone Takes Screenshots of Everything You Do 225
The_AV8R writes "Jonathan Zdziarski showed that every time you press the Home button on your iPhone, a screen capture is taken in order to produce a visual effect. This image is then cached and later deleted. Zdziarski says that there have been cases of law enforcement looking up sex offenders' old data and checking recovered screenshots." This revelation occurred in the midst of a webcast on iPhone forensics, demonstrating how to bypass the iPhone's password security (not trivial, but doable). Video from the talk is not online yet but is promised soon over at O'Reilly.
Malfeasance handbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart crooks use dumb (disposable) phones.
Dumb crooks use smart phones.
simple fix for Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, right. (Score:1, Insightful)
fud (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's nice to know (Score:3, Insightful)
Errr, it's not phoning these screenshots home. You must have a problem with .bash_history too, right? Caching your keystrokes! OMG!
In all fairness, if his account password "alpine" is posted all over the internet, looking into his .bash_history IS a pretty damn good way of spying on him. (Granted, there are bigger issues in this scenario.)
-Em
Re:Makes you wonder.... (Score:5, Insightful)
it makes me wonder why there is no 'badtitle' tag.
It doesn't take a screenshot of everything you do, just when you hit the home button.
Re:Makes you wonder.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It makes me wonder what parental unit is stupid enough to give their kid an iPhone
Re:It's nice to know (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, if you overwrite your firmware (jailbreak), enable SSH access to the phone, and then NOT change your root password. Quite frankly, you deserve it at that point.
Sounds like yet another sensationalist (and completely inaccurate) headline pointing to a non-story. Unless some pervert is hits the home button while trying to take a (crappy, borderline-useless unless it's being done in full daylight) picture of himself raping a kid, AND law enforcement not only knows to look for this cached file, I don't really see this being an issue. I suppose it could possibly be used as supplemental evidence when a case is being built up, but the actual AIM chat logs, sent emails, phone call history (all of which are far more accessible) and such would be far more potentially incriminating.
Re:FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
possessing drugs makes you a crook now?
it may be illegal to own certain drugs, but that doesn't make drug users "crooks" or bad people.
heck, 90% of the population uses drugs recreationally/socially. and stop deluding yourself if you think that alcohol is not a drug. alcohol causes more harm to society in terms of social problems and drunk driving accidents than most illicit drugs ever did.
Re:FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
Therefore, forensics experts have used this security flaw to successfully
nab criminals who have been accused of rape, murder or drug deals, Zdziarski said.
iPhone: the tool of choice for rapists, murders, and drug dealers!
Joking aside, the article is puzzling and it reeks of FUD: if the iCrooks were bad enough to
get the authorities to actively track and sieze their data then they deserve to be caught
for being too stoopid to buy disposable phones in cash from 7-11. Even Johnny dormroom pot-
dealer knows that!
FUD doesn't mean what you think it means.
Re:What's the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason it's bad is because it's another way for someone to harvest personal information off your phone for apparently no real reason at all. It's crap like this that makes me feel just fine having my little fugly Palm Centro. I don't have to have yet another security hole because Apple felt taking a screenshot would make for a cool bit of eye-candy.
People know how to clear their browser cache and those who care clear it regularly. Pictures you took are going to be saved, because you intended to take them and you probably intend to save them too, along with your files. But taking a snapshot for no real good reason at all and not telling your customers about it sucks. That's why it's a problem.
Well, at least it's not like what some Apple fanboys do...when something is found wrong with an Apple product, they immediately compare it with a Microsoft product and say "it's still better". That's basically like saying "At least it's not complete crap."
Re:What's the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, a potential security issue has been introduced for the purpose of look and feel. While the headline is sensational and seems to be written by a person with no technical background or understanding fo the iPhone, the point remains. Pictures of what you are doing prior to pressing the home button are taken, and stored for some indeterminate amount of time. This is like the browser issue, likely not a big problem. OTOH, there does not seem to be an option under the general/home button menu to turn off this effect, so there is no way for persons worried about the issue to turn it off. It is an interesting problem.
Re:FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple FUD on slashdot? Maybe the LHC is gearing up for armageddon after all.
Are you kidding? Ever since that line of people mysteriously turned up at an Apple Store, iPhone stories have become hate-fests on Slashdot. I'm not kidding. Somebody says they like the iPhone's web-browser and they're a 'fanboy'. But if somebody says the iPhone is 'useless', they're objective and rational.
It has gotten rather obnoxious lately.
Yes, maybe take some time off? (Score:2, Insightful)
It really is no surprise that someone with the screename "lysergic acid" takes issue with being a crook because of illegal drug possession, but how the fuck did this get modded up?
YES possessing illegal drugs makes one a crook. Deal with it, because it's reality. I really don't see how an intelligent person could openly wonder how doing the very thing that makes one a crook could cause one to be called a crook.
Now, you can argue over whether you should be a crook, but that's not what was done here.
Second, save the vacuous "alcohol" argument. I'll wager anything you want that in a random survey, the majority of respondents will indeed say alcohol is a drug, so I don't know who you think is deluding themselves besides you.
Next, why are you even bringing up alcohol? If you want to decriminalize drugs, then make the case. Aim for what you want, and save the attempts at drawing equivalence. Saying "a drug that is easily and readily available does more damamge than drugs that are much more rare and difficult to obtain" isn't much of a point outside of a smoke filled dorm room.
Re:Yes, maybe take some time off? (Score:1, Insightful)
Saying "a drug that is easily and readily available does more damamge than drugs that are much more rare and difficult to obtain" isn't much of a point outside of a smoke filled dorm room.
It is very trivial to find someone dealing cannabis, and in finding such people, you're likely to find people who sell harder drugs. This is why people consider cannabis to be a gateway drug, because the people you get it off of are likely to be involved in harder, more "exciting" drugs, thus influencing people to try them. It's rather easy to find anything, as long as you know where to look. (Try the local pizza place, I guarantee at least 50% of them smoke cannabis)
Re:Yes, maybe take some time off? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, because the ease of going into a pizza joint and randomly asking strangers if they sell an illegal drug, and hoping they say yes, is quite comparable to the ease of walking into an ubiquitous liquor store and walking out three minutes later with a fifth of rum.
You're nuts.
Re:Yes, maybe take some time off? (Score:2, Insightful)
More trivial than walking down to the store? (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Not more trivial than walking down to the store.
In fact, it would take a particularly ignorant, intentionally disingenuous person to argue that getting pot is anywhere near as easy as getting booze.
Next, the reason people think pot is a gateway drug is the same reason people think running around in the cold causes the flu (I SAID FLU THERE PEDANTS, SO FUCK OFF). they're ignorant and are repeating bullshit they've had drilled into them.
It of course never occurs to you people that it may in fact have nothing to do with the drug and simply be a consequence of well ingrained patterns of behavior that lead to drug taking.
No way!
Last, I don't need to "know where to look" for booze, as they have whole stores devoted to it. I could even ask someone I don't know while I'm passing them on the street.
In short, everything you said is wrong.
Re:What's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
It's crap like this that makes me feel just fine having my little fugly Palm Centro. I don't have to have yet another security hole because Apple felt taking a screenshot would make for a cool bit of eye-candy.
Admit it. You're letting envy cloud your judgement.
Think about what you're saying. "Yeah, my device is ugly and stupid, but YOURS HAS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION ON IT".
Seriously. Someone gets my phone, my *LAST* concern is potentially recoverable screenshots of what I was doing on it when I closed an application. What about all the personal data it stores through the very nature of its function?!
lame
Re:Yes, maybe take some time off? (Score:3, Insightful)
And since by that reasoning the only reason cannabis acts as a gateway is because it's illegal. Legalize it and there goes your supposed gateway drug effect.
wait a minute (Score:2, Insightful)
OSX also does that little shrinking animation when you minimize a window. I wonder if the same flaw is in OSX?
Re:FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
And BTW the dictionary.com definition of "crook" says nothing about simple law breakers. The closest it comes is "a dishonest person, esp. a sharper, swindler, or thief." so unless the drug dealer is dishonest (some are, some aren't) they are by no means a "crook". Unless they stole their stash from someone else.
Seems most popular at opposite extremes of age (Score:3, Insightful)
Young kids tend to love the built in camera, especially using it with the Photobooth application. The Grandparents love video-chat with the grandkids. Everybody in-between in age thinks it's a waste of money.
I've used the built-in camera in my Macbook exactly once so far.
Re:Makes you wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see a situation in which a phone *might* make sense (kid works a late shift, has an unreliable car, etc... But I cant see the wisdom in getting a kid the iPhone or any other upper level phone. If a kid works and uses their own money thats all well and good but its way to much to give a kid because 'they need one'.
Re:Makes you wonder.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Jealous of what, exactly? Kids sending SMS text at 100s the cost of an email, or simple IM? People paying hundreds of bucks to set themselves up for locked-in contracts?
I've been an Apple client since 1979. You want to know what pisses me off? Apple turning into a fucking toy company, and incrementally destroying NeXTSTEP. Apple spending time on bullshit iPhone screenshot shit, and hanging on to the HFS+ file system, which is actually incompatible with their lousy OS. Leopard is nothing but a resource-hungry POS.
I ride the bus and Light Rail, here in Minneapolis. I hear the ringtones and sometimes I glance around and every kid and person of color on the whole bus is playing Tetris, or fiddling with their fucking phones. When I see the voting returns, the top 10 TV shows by viewership and the voracious appetite in America for 'subjective' dispute of scientific facts, it's no wonder the country has reached a point where every successive 'decision' brings them closer to their own private armageddon. These people are wasting their fucking time on bullshit. Apple knows this, so yes, they pander to people with more money than brains.
And just so there's no mistake, my last four PowerBooks, and three Apple desktops, were gifts from my happy clients. Apple hasn't seen a nickel (outside of ONE recently-purchased keyboard), from me, since '94. And if Adobe ever ports to Linux, that's it for me, sayonara toy company, and back to work.
Trolling much?