Canadian customs installed spyware app on my iPhone? | Hacker News Reader

Canadian customs installed spyware app on my iPhone?

14 pointspcmaffey23 comments

Or am I being paranoid?

Does anyone know what this app is? Here's a picture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3IdETDqOKVtVzNXWnVubXpmY1E/view?usp=sharing

Because here's what I know:

1) I'm a US citizen who was detained by customs for not having a work visa to enter Canada for meetings with a client.

2) They told me they had "blah blah" every right to search my shit, then took my iPhone and went into a backroom.

3) On the plane, before landing, I went through my Apps > Storage and deleted a bunch of apps I was no longer using. I mention this because this list was fresh in my mind.

4) When my phone was returned to me, while waiting, I checked my apps list and found the mysterious app (linked to above) installed in my list!!! What the hell, it wasn't there before. Never seen it before. And it has no name? Nor does it show up anywhere in my home screen.

5) I took this picture and then deleted the app.

6) Woah, wait a second, checked my list again. THE APP IS STILL THERE. I delete it again. And again it won't delete!!!

7) Before I leave (without my passport), I ask the agent what is this app she installed on my phone?? She denies anything, saying she couldn't install anything without my iCloud passport (weirdly specific).

So what the hell? I'm at my friends place, and I've completely wiped my iPhone (it's gone). I'm writing this up wondering what the hell this app was, and more importantly, if Apple has given governments a backdoor ability to instal apps?

Or maybe it's nothing? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Yes, I think you're being paranoid. It's hard to blame you given the last few news cycles. Canada did not backdoor your phone.

Having worked for a couple years for a Canadian company, I will confirm for you: Canada is super-unfriendly about people entering the country to work undisclosed jobs. Canadian customs often seems to start from the presumption that your visit is surreptitiously commercial.

If you give customs a sort of "half-commercial" answer, like "visiting a client" or "giving a talk", it can get worse. I was often given the advice of simply claiming I was there to visit a friend, even when what I was going for was otherwise legit. I've had friends in that same situation turned back at the border.

Just to add the anecdata for the topic, I will confirm this.

I've traveled to Canada for one-week SharePoint teaching gigs and to present at conferences. One visit, I was teaching a class for the government and had a letter from the project leader describing the work done, the duration (one week) and how a non-citizen was chosen to do the work. I was held up in immigration for over an hour and almost sent back home.

Every other time I answered their queries about my visit honestly, I've been treated with varying levels of suspicion, from the "ol' stink eye" to almost being tossed out. And none of those visits were set to be longer than a week.

They don't need a backdoor. They take your phone and demand the key. If you don't give it you will never see your phone again. Do you think they just thumb through your emails or, being a government institution, plug it in and dump off everything on the phone while possibly installing a small app to help achieve that goal. It's not a conspiracy theory. They actually take physical control of your unlocked phone with the intent to search all of its data. The only question is do they do this electronically and are there any lasting effects on the device such as a leftover app they might have installed.

Canada did not install an app on this phone.

Ok, Canada.

The malignant stance of Canada towards US citizens you describe is exactly my experience in the 5 times I've traveled here for business.

I can now add "been deported" to my list of life accomplishments... My work visa was rejected because there's no category for "software development" in NAFTA.

While I'm inclined to believe that this app was not spyware, but rather a broken leftover from deleting other apps on my way there, I'm certainly not 100%. I'd say, about 70-30.

My client now wants to move his company out of Canada because of this... Trudeau has a lot of work ahead of him.

I'm telling you, 100%, that you did not find a trace of Canada's secret customs spyware program.

That is awfully confident for someone cautious. I am much closer to 95% than 100%.

If I could be 101% on this, I would be.

Is that the same kind of "deported" that most Canadian devs get when they apply for TN status at the border?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/07/22/every-iph...

Apparently the NSA has a backdoor named ‘DROPOUTJEEP’ but needs physical access to the iPhone first. Possible Canada is using a backdoor like it as well.

Apple is not cooperating with this backdoor it uses an exploit to install.

If they know it's an exploit and do nothing to fix it, it's as good as cooperating.

not if they don't know how to fix it.

They took my iPhone as well and demanded the code a while back for no reason except that I was traveling alone. I imagine they wanted to dig for info on my employer because that's the question they strangely asked at the highway booth before flagging me in. Or maybe they just thought I was going to pick up drugs or something. Even pretended to check me for guns like any criminal would be that stupid. I remember a weird app like that but I thought at the time maybe it was due to messing around with xcode. It's not installed now.

Oh buddy, when you lose physical access to your device, it's not your device any more. I imagine you got a full rootkit with forever-active wiretapping. Degauss and destroy I say!

Can't remember exactly but it could just be instagram storage. Try the link below and see if that helps you figure it out.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=info+version+7...

Its nothing. I also has that. I think thats a corrupted app

This might be an app that was not upgrade properly or something, nothing I haven't seen before.

Except I never installed this app. Never seen that icon before...

That icon is the placeholder icon for apps without an icon.

Since you deleted your phone there's no way to find out what it was; might just be the result of a bug in iOS, or some test app you might have installed at some point. Or it could be a spy app -- but to install it, your phone would need to be at least unlocked (I don't think iCloud password is necessary)

Are you an iOS developer by chance?

No, I design iOS apps and use Testflight, but not xcode.

Are you certain that this app wasn't an instance of a TestFlight app?

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