Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

I've installed the "little tool" on my Flipper Zero and confirmed that it does, in fact, crash my iPhone.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here on this site, but as a reminder, the tool only exposes a bug that was already there. It's an exploit for an existing problem. I'm glad that this bug is getting press now so maybe it'll get fixed. Without the public visibility, only the bad guys would have this ability.

And as another reminder, an exploit that can reboot a device might be able to leverage that memory leak, null dereference, or whatever else to do more than just crash it.

View on HN

Even just crashing the device has significant impact.

A bank robber, terrorist or totalitarian state could benefit significantly from bringing down all cell phones in the area for a few minutes (or even just crashing them in a loop as they boot up).

Good point!

That's a great incentive to fix such (bluetooth) vulnerabilities! Surely your message was because you're in favor for fixing such bugs urgently I hope?

I think that's the only reasonable interpretation of their comment, that this is a serious problem that needs to be fixed.

I hope so, but to me it sounded like they preferred security through obscurity. I admit my comment was quite tongue in cheek, mainly because I've seen a lot of people react to the flipper's existence by saying that the device shouldn't exist, instead of that vulnerabilities should be fixed. The comment sounded to me more like the "flippers should be banned" type, but that's my perception of the comment.

> Surely your message was because you're in favor for fixing such bugs urgently I hope?

Such an odd question.

I clarified a bit in a sibling comment but this was in response to folks who respond by wanting the flipper banned. I think I just misread the author's tone.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi waste battery power on a phone, so the best thing is to leave them off anyway. Not that it should be vulnerable to this BT attack, of course.

If I'm home, I'm using a computer or tablet, so I don't even turn Wi-Fi on my phone there.

People don't seem to think this stuff through. Although to be fair, most people have no idea they're wasting power, and Apple defaults everything to ON and makes it a PITA to turn this shit off. They even put fake "on/off" controls in "Control Center" that only toggle BT and Wi-Fi TEMPORARILY. Offensive disregard for the user's choices.

I suggest telling Apple to permanently respect the user's on/off choices no matter where they make them: https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone/

> Bluetooth and Wi-Fi waste battery power on a phone

Bluetooth uses very very little power. Think about it. While I don't know the specifics of the iphones BT unit, let's take the Airpods and assume it's similar . They have about a 25mah battery per earpiece (from what i gather from a 3 second search) and they last about 5 hours. So 100mah per 20 hours. Your iphone, let's say, has 3000mah battery. So in 20 hours BT would use 100/3000 pct of your battery in that period. And that's actively using it.

It's really not worth the effort to bother toggling it.

Now, if you still want to, well that's what automations are for.

Bluetooth may be efficient enough to be negligible. But not Wi-Fi.

I don't see why a toggle should require "automation," but it doesn't matter in my case because it's basically never necessary.

My strong assumption is that the majority of times that people toggle off Wi-Fi, is to temporarily resolve connection issues. Keeping it off permanently is probably not what they want. The UI warns you of the temporary nature too.

Those who don’t use it, like you, quickly discover the actual way of disabling it. It’s good UX design that aligns with most user’s preferences.

The warning in the UI was tacked on only after people discovered and started complaining about this initially-hidden change.

The change removed functionality that was previously available: quick access to the real on/off toggles for these functions. There's a page in Settings devoted to "Control Center." I would have no problem with it if there were a temporary/permanent option there for these toggles, even if Apple defaulted them to the current (temporary) behavior. Then everyone's preference would be served.

A lot of people use bluetooth devices - watches, headphones, car, speakers, etc. It makes much more sense for the toggle to only temporarily turn off bluetooth because in today's majority use case, that's what people are likely wanting.

It sucks that you have to deal with it for your minority case, but that's just the way things are. There are work-arounds, but you clearly don't want to try any of those. You're prerogative.

And Wi-Fi is more efficient than cellular. It's best to use that as much as possible.

The real reason to leave bluetooth disabled isn't battery drain, but tracking. Bluetooth tracking beacons are all over the place and detect and identify your device from distances between feet and miles.

> Bluetooth and Wi-Fi waste battery power on a phone, so the best thing is to leave them off anyway. Not that it should be vulnerable to this BT attack, of course.

Wi-Fi uses less energy than LTE/5G.

> Although to be fair, most people have no idea they're wasting power, and Apple defaults everything to ON and makes it a PITA to turn this shit off.

Because the vast majority people are OK losing < 2% of their battery life in exchange for the convenience of not having to turn all this shit on every time they want to use their headphones, listen to music in their car, cast something to their TV, etc... Hell, things like smart watches wouldn't even work with this approach.

It doesn't matter if it uses less energy than cellular; it still uses ADDITIONAL energy.

I don't have to turn any of this shit on. If I want to listen to music, I use the headphone jack or dock connector. I have a real watch, so no issue there. And I never cast to my projector because casting sucks ass, so I use a Shield.

> It doesn't matter if it uses less energy than cellular; it still uses ADDITIONAL energy.

This is not true, because both cellular and wifi connectivity do not have a fixed energy cost. That is determined by both utilization and reception quality.

When you are on WiFi with a smartphone, cellular utilization goes through the floor because nearly all utilization is moved to your more energy efficient wifi connection. Even more so if your carrier supports WiFi calling.

I can prove this in my own house. When I turn WiFi off on my phone for whatever reason and forget to turn it back on before the end of the day, my battery drains noticeably faster.

The things you say were true 15 years ago. But technology has changed and improved tremendously since then.

One is saying: I don't want to consume electricity, so respect my choice when I light off in some rooms.

But all fans are replying: your living room consumption is less than your bed room one.

Sad.

Phenomenal, isn't it?

Is it that they don't read, or that they're so eager to prove their inapplicable "point?"

If I'm not at home, I'm not on Wi-Fi. So having it on is a waste of power, if nothing else.

If I am at home, I'm not using the phone except for actual phone calls. It easily lasts all day on cellular standby, and I don't have to remember to turn Wi-Fi off if I'm going to be out for a good portion of the day. I can also charge the phone right in front of me on my desk where I am most of time during the day.

These things are true today, right this minute.

Airplane mode with wi-fi on uses less power. (Especially true if you have poor cell signal)

Unless something is broken, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi use so little extra power, that I suspect you're wasting more power by waking up the phone and powering up the display for the couple seconds it takes you to toggle either of them when you need it.

Also: mobile data uses way more energy than Wi-Fi.

I never need it.

I’m not sure that’s true at all. With WiFi on and connected, it uses WiFi calling which uses way less power than LTE. WiFi uses next to no power when it’s not passing data. The power saving extensions to it are pretty good, and coalesce traffic right down.

If I have Wi-Fi available, it almost always means I'm home and I don't care how much power it's using. If I'm not home, I'm not on Wi-Fi and I want to conserve battery power. So there's no need to ever have Wi-Fi activated on my phone, unless I'm doing a software update.

I'm sure there have been efficiency improvements over the years, but it's still needless power consumption.

Also Wi-Fi calling appears to be off by default. Thanks for bringing it up, though. I might try it next time I'm in another country; if you switch SIMs on an iPhone, it loses all association between people's phone numbers and their entries in your contacts. Yes... the iPhone can't handle travel, 16 years in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

Then why was the Reply button enabled, and why does this rudeness persist year after year?

If you’ve got solid WiFi at home, it’s worth having it on even when home. It’s generally better than the cell. (Especially if you’ve got FTTP)

> I'm glad that this bug is getting press now so maybe it'll get fixed.

Of course it will get fixed. Apple fixes bugs _if_ the exploits are made public. /s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com