Slashdot Mirror
iPhone Takes Screenshots of Everything You Do
The_AV8R writes "Jonathan Zdziarski showed that every time you press the Home button on your iPhone, a screen capture is taken in order to produce a visual effect. This image is then cached and later deleted. Zdziarski says that there have been cases of law enforcement looking up sex offenders' old data and checking recovered screenshots." This revelation occurred in the midst of a webcast on iPhone forensics, demonstrating how to bypass the iPhone's password security (not trivial, but doable). Video from the talk is not online yet but is promised soon over at O'Reilly.
Item 1:
Smart crooks use dumb (disposable) phones.
Dumb crooks use smart phones.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Give the concerned users an option of turning off the "shrinking screenshot" animation that occurs when the Home button is pressed (which is why the screenshot is cached in the first place).
Tag this article as fud, because that's what it is. Any excuse to bash apple and/or iphone.. Really, if we're going to get upset about this, let's get upset about browser caching, cookies, history.. etc etc
it makes me wonder why there is no 'badtitle' tag.
It doesn't take a screenshot of everything you do, just when you hit the home button.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Sure, if you overwrite your firmware (jailbreak), enable SSH access to the phone, and then NOT change your root password. Quite frankly, you deserve it at that point.
Sounds like yet another sensationalist (and completely inaccurate) headline pointing to a non-story. Unless some pervert is hits the home button while trying to take a (crappy, borderline-useless unless it's being done in full daylight) picture of himself raping a kid, AND law enforcement not only knows to look for this cached file, I don't really see this being an issue. I suppose it could possibly be used as supplemental evidence when a case is being built up, but the actual AIM chat logs, sent emails, phone call history (all of which are far more accessible) and such would be far more potentially incriminating.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
In this case, a potential security issue has been introduced for the purpose of look and feel. While the headline is sensational and seems to be written by a person with no technical background or understanding fo the iPhone, the point remains. Pictures of what you are doing prior to pressing the home button are taken, and stored for some indeterminate amount of time. This is like the browser issue, likely not a big problem. OTOH, there does not seem to be an option under the general/home button menu to turn off this effect, so there is no way for persons worried about the issue to turn it off. It is an interesting problem.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's crap like this that makes me feel just fine having my little fugly Palm Centro. I don't have to have yet another security hole because Apple felt taking a screenshot would make for a cool bit of eye-candy.
Admit it. You're letting envy cloud your judgement.
Think about what you're saying. "Yeah, my device is ugly and stupid, but YOURS HAS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION ON IT".
Seriously. Someone gets my phone, my *LAST* concern is potentially recoverable screenshots of what I was doing on it when I closed an application. What about all the personal data it stores through the very nature of its function?!
lame
I can see a situation in which a phone *might* make sense (kid works a late shift, has an unreliable car, etc... But I cant see the wisdom in getting a kid the iPhone or any other upper level phone. If a kid works and uses their own money thats all well and good but its way to much to give a kid because 'they need one'.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Jealous of what, exactly? Kids sending SMS text at 100s the cost of an email, or simple IM? People paying hundreds of bucks to set themselves up for locked-in contracts?
I've been an Apple client since 1979. You want to know what pisses me off? Apple turning into a fucking toy company, and incrementally destroying NeXTSTEP. Apple spending time on bullshit iPhone screenshot shit, and hanging on to the HFS+ file system, which is actually incompatible with their lousy OS. Leopard is nothing but a resource-hungry POS.
I ride the bus and Light Rail, here in Minneapolis. I hear the ringtones and sometimes I glance around and every kid and person of color on the whole bus is playing Tetris, or fiddling with their fucking phones. When I see the voting returns, the top 10 TV shows by viewership and the voracious appetite in America for 'subjective' dispute of scientific facts, it's no wonder the country has reached a point where every successive 'decision' brings them closer to their own private armageddon. These people are wasting their fucking time on bullshit. Apple knows this, so yes, they pander to people with more money than brains.
And just so there's no mistake, my last four PowerBooks, and three Apple desktops, were gifts from my happy clients. Apple hasn't seen a nickel (outside of ONE recently-purchased keyboard), from me, since '94. And if Adobe ever ports to Linux, that's it for me, sayonara toy company, and back to work.
Trolling much?