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Comment by fiberoptick | Hacker News Reader

This could have been an immensely powerful covert communications channel for field operators of military and intelligence services

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It feels like Apple's ability to fix this is somewhat limited, since they can't change anything about Airtags that have already been produced.

Couldn't a software change on the iPhone side prevent it?

I can't find anything that shows OTA firmware updates of the tags themselves happening. Yes, you could tweak the iPhone, but if a "emulated tag" looks exactly like a "real tag that can't be updated", you're somewhat limited.

I was thinking something more along the lines of rate limiting, doesn't this exploit depend on lots of spammy requests?

Rate limiting would help with the "hijacking the network to send your own data" piece in the original article.

It wouldn't do much for other uses, like tracking people without their knowledge. A "faked AirTag", could, for example, rotate it's serial number to avoid triggering Apple's "AirTag Found Moving With You" feature. Or the opposite of that. You could stick a fake device on someone's car and trigger the "AirTag Found Moving With You" warning over and over by periodically changing the serial number after the user suppressed the warning for a particular AirTag.

Presumably a valid serial number for each AirTag is something that can't be guessed? That's how it is with Apple's other products. Each serial number has some entropy in it and there's no way to generate a valid new one.

They are sequential: https://itechbrand.com/purple-iphone-12-is-the-first-apple-p...

AirTags run firmware that can be remotely upgraded.

Any more info on "can be"? For existing AirTags, they would have to already have that functionality (polling for updates). I can't find anything that says they do.

I’d be surprise if Apple fielded AirTags without any way to update their firmware. I doubt it would be automatic though, you’d have to push an update to them from an iDevice.

It would have to be automatic for it to be used to kill off "fake AirTags". Unless Apple is willing to take the hit of all the complaining.

Why couldn't they update the firmware automatically? They already do that with AirPods, iirc.

It's a much cheaper device than Airpods, harder to manage battery life, and there's not yet evidence that they can update them automatically. As far as I can tell, competitor products (Tile, for example) don't update firmware automatically...it's a user-initiated thing.

Then you'd have the problem of new air tags not working until they'd been updated. It's something of a minor problem, but unless people actually misuse this enough to be a worse problem, I don't see why Apple would update to disable this.

When doesn’t Apple “take the hit” of complaints?

AirTags start beeping if they are removed from the associated device for more than a few days, so there is plenty of opportunity to update them.

They have functionality for reporting the version, it would be really surprising if they couldn’t be upgraded.

AirPods upgrade firmware automatically, chances are it works in the same way.

Their firmware can probably be updated in the same mysterious way AirPods firmware is updated.

Roughly, be in the presence of an iDevice for a certain amount of time under unknown conditions. The advice on the internet is usually something like "leave your AirPods charging and have your phone connected to them when you go to sleep, and they'll probably be updated in the morning".

AirPods have a consistent source of power, though. AirTags run off a coin cell.

I think it still can...

No, they have other less detectable methods. Your idea shows an awesome train of thought though. Ever thought about switching careers?

As far as this method, the IC has thought about this very method for a long time. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t been used in the past.

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