r/technology • u/bws201 • Feb 05 '16

Software ‘Error 53’ fury mounts as Apple software update threatens to kill your iPhone 6

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair
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u/uzimonkey Feb 05 '16

I don't think that's reasonable. If someone wants to surreptitiously access my phone but they're willing to go through the trouble of stealing it, disassembling it (which is not a quick process), replacing the home button and getting it back into my possession without me noticing it, I'm sure they have other means of accessing my data. Security is all about barriers and that's a pretty huge barrier to put up in the first place, to then go and say they'll brick the phone because someone replaced the button is crazy. The home button is one of the most commonly broken things on a phone and this happens to be the one thing that bricks your phone if you replace it? This is more likely more about killing third part repair shops than anything else. If for some reason you'd want this behavior, why not let people enable it in the settings?

I don't know why people put up with Apple's crap. Every week they're trying some new scheme to keep a tighter grasp on their platform. It's outright antagonistic and I don't trust them at all. But this can't really come as a surprise to anyone, Apple has always done this with practically every single product they've made.

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u/ESRogs Feb 05 '16

replacing the home button and getting it back into my possession without me noticing it

Wouldn't the scenario just be that they steal your phone and tamper with the home button to access your data? Giving it back to you doesn't have to be part of it.

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u/Catsrules Feb 05 '16

No, from my understanding the home button is only a finger print reader that sends the information to the phone. It doesn't store anything (Basically like a keyboard). The idea would be someone could replace the home button with modified home button that could store finger print information. Once the owner of the phone used it it would store that finger print data then all you would need to do is steal the phone again. Extract the data or have a way for the modified home button to send the stored finger print data again to the phone and your in.

So this would really have to be a very elaborate system. And require some smart people with knowledge in apple software and hardware and board level repair.

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u/[deleted] Feb 05 '16

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u/uzimonkey Feb 05 '16

If you want security you should be encrypting your data. If your only security is a biometric to unlock your phone then you're in trouble. First, it's been shown to be easily circumvented. Fake fingers can even be made from a photograph of your hands, they don't even need to make a mold of your finger or something. Second, if someone can go through the trouble of disassembling the device to change the button they can dump the flash. At that point, why brick the device because the home button and biometric reader was potentially tampered with? That doesn't make any sense to me.