Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmedwards | Hacker News Reader

I think Apple's HomeKit deserves a mention here.

Is it open protocol? If not, then it's pretty much useless anyway.

Indeed, they might even have exaggerated it. The computations are expensive and can take several seconds even on powerful MCUs. There are HomeKit chips that can accelerate this, but good luck getting your hands on one (or its manual).

It does? I honestly haven't heard much about HomeKit from a security perspective, so I guess it is either not used or working out well so far :)

Has it been generally well received security-wise then?

It's probably the most secure, but that's because they cheat and require a secure element in all products with a pre-shared key.

Not a good solution in general.

You mean that HomeKit-compatible products all need to include some kind of HomeKit-chip with a pre-shared key or something? I'm completely unfamiliar and a quick search on homekit and pre-shared key didn't make me wiser :)

You don't even get to know what's inside HomeKit until you're an MFI-certified developer with Apple. And yes, there's a chip involved (again, which you can't even touch until you're an MFI licensee). The chip handles all the security protocols involved.

https://mfi.apple.com/MFiWeb/getFAQ.action

That doesn't sound in line with my preferences but quite Apple. So maybe high quality (hard to say?) but quite proprietary.

Makes me curious about how that homebridge node thing makes it work.

Well, it's pretty simple. If you want into Apple's ecosystem, you follow their rules. They've hardware-locked many other external things (dongles, charging cables, etc).

Cynics will say it's a money grab, proponents will say it greatly reduces or eliminates the risk of buying something that will not work right. Apple sells itself on the ability of their things working right out of the box.

> proponents will say it greatly reduces or eliminates the risk of buying something that will not work right.

IIRC, it's been shown that a massive percentage of the Apple chargers for sale on Amazon are difficult to spot counterfeits. Some of those use dangerous electronic designs.

Yeah, unfortunately Apple can't stop everyone from making bad 5VDC bricks with USB sockets. Perhaps the "approved" cables have some kind of overvoltage protection in them, but otherwise that's always been a weak point.

I guess it does, yes. But then I expect a lot more from Apple that I do from Ikea on this market.

actually, i'd be surprised if apple had better ideas here than ikea. ikea is a home and furniture company and always has been. apple is neither, it's a luxury goods company at this point.

apple can definitely execute, though. it just has to execute the right thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com