Wi-Fi hack creates 'no iOS zone' that cripples iPhones and iPads

So it only crashed the whole device if the device was under 'heavy use', which seems to contradict the claim that it renders devices unusable immediately.

An example of the sort of thing that gives me doubts. They refer to another supposed demonstrated attack called "Wifigate", which no-one has been talking about, except for themselves. And when you read the details, they claim that iPhones come preloaded with a bunch of WiFi SSIDS that the phone will automatically connect to. mostly telecommunications companies. Up until recently I used to work for one of those listed companies, and I have owned iPhones continuously since the iPhone 3G. I can tell you categorically that iPhones do not automatically connect to SFR wifi hotspots like this company claims. This fact destroys an important part of their claim for this current "attack", that you can be affected even if you've never connected to a Wifi hotspot.

So that's one guaranteed example of exaggeration right there, which seeing as it's the only piece of information in the article that I'm capable of verifying myself, makes me very distrustful of the entire article.

Large utiltity plant... iOS... large utility plant... iOS... Did I miss the post where large utility plants said "Why we stopped using closed control systems for our reactors and switched to iPads" ?

If this lead to a way to grab information from the phoen that would be more damaging, than a simply a denial of use in a delimited area.

This earlier bug called WiFiGate has a list of pre-populated trusted wifi networks. From the same group https://www.skycure.com/blog/wifigate-how-mobile-carriers-ex...

"We knew that any delay in patching the vulnerability could lead to a serious business impact: an organized denial of service (DoS) attack can lead to big losses."

Edit: (See below comments) I actually have the equivalent of what you are talking about disabled on my phone (android), as it creates a popup context menu that is too easily pressed 'accessing random open networks'. You want the user to have to open the wifi settings and select a network they know / have preconfigured, not some open network that the phone is eager to join.

At the university I go to, a laptop is essentially a requirement for a lot of classes.

The issue is not the devices, it's how they're used. Besides, at least in my experience, trying to ban websites, devices, etc in schools doesn't actually work and just leads to kids getting around it, and continuing to do what they were doing before.

The internet censorship in particular got to be pretty absurd at my highschool, I remember not being able to register Native Instruments hardware in my engineering class because their site was blocked for 'having a toolbar'... And yet those of us that wanted free roam on the internet brought smartphones or used ultrasurf etc, but even the teacher couldn't access the registration site without us bypassing the filters while he looked the other way.

Devices are tools. You shouldn't ban tools. You should teach people how to use them effectively.

Plus, it's way faster (and tidier) to take notes in a laptop rather than pen+paper.

Also, I've had a few students with disabilities who could not use pen and paper, but could write with special keyboards. And blind ones. Maybe we should tell them to stay out as well.

What ever happened to promoting OSS by making it better? Forcing people to play juvenile games seems like a great way to turn everyone off on Linux permanently.

I shudder to think what my middle school self would think of me as I type this from my MBP. I use a Mac as my laptop. So what? I run Linux on my desktop and have an Android phone. This all seems unnecessarily petty.