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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.
Therefore, forensics experts have used this security flaw to successfully nab criminals who have been accused of rape, murder or drug deals, Zdziarski said.
iPhone: the tool of choice for rapists, murders, and drug dealers!
Joking aside, the article is puzzling and it reeks of FUD: if the iCrooks were bad enough to get the authorities to actively track and sieze their data then they deserve to be caught for being too stoopid to buy disposable phones in cash from 7-11. Even Johnny dormroom pot- dealer knows that!
Item 1:
Smart crooks use dumb (disposable) phones.
Dumb crooks use smart phones.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What type of incriminating things are sex ofenders doing with their iPhones.
If it's dead, you killed it.
Errr, it's not phoning these screenshots home. You must have a problem with .bash_history too, right? Caching your keystrokes! OMG!
-mkb
Sorry to diverge from the screenshot topic but does anyone know if Mr. Zdziarski will demonstrating how to hack the just released 2.1 firmware? Or is a previous version that (may have) been patched? This seems much more significant than being able to see (via a screenshot) what the last user action was.
As for the screenshot, hmm... well at least it doesn't seem to be a deliberate attempt by Apple to get more info on the user. Also, it seems pretty difficult to get these screenshots (since they are automatically deleted according to the article you have to find and undelete them). Doesn't sound like a trivial or reliable way to snoop on people. Still I guess a security flaw is a flaw so be aware!
It's pragmatic to not press the home button when doing home invasions or killing people, I guess.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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).
So it takes a screenshot for some effect? Is there even a way to do this without taking a screenshot? A way that is easy enough to be performed on a smartphone?
And what did you expect from Apple? That every bit of data that was discarded is overwritten ten times? Jeez, I enjoy bashing big companies as much as the other guy but now they're looking too far. Remember, it also saves your web history, every picture you took, every file you opened everything you did somewhere...
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
Why bother with such a useless thing? It's never saved to Flash; it's created in RAM. Law enforcement must be damn good if they can recover such an image from RAM, so damn good they must be making shit up.
It turns out that you browser will store all the information needed to recreate the web pages you visit! Not just a screenshot! This critical flaw appears to have present for years in all known browsers! The end is near!
Seriously? Come on. I know ./ likes to post anything related to the iPhone, especially if it involves "spying", but this is pretty uninteresting. Security is traded for speed and features on a daily basis, including places where do so presents a major risk (*cough*Outlook). This is really not too surprising since it trades at most a little privacy in exchange for a neat effect; what would you expect Apple's iCandy to do?
It's trivial to disable logging to .bash_history. What about for this?
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
Errr, it's not phoning these screenshots home. You must have a problem with .bash_history too, right? Caching your keystrokes! OMG!
In all fairness, if his account password "alpine" is posted all over the internet, looking into his .bash_history IS a pretty damn good way of spying on him. (Granted, there are bigger issues in this scenario.)
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Don't forget the page file. The horror; your computer is constantly taking screen shots of your applications ram and storing them on the hard drive!
Think of the children!
Tibbon
tibbon.com
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).
It makes me wonder what parental unit is stupid enough to give their kid an iPhone
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
The iPhone takes a screenshot, but they never said in the FA whether its actually written to flash or not!
Given the limited write cycles of Flash, I would hope that Apple just keeps it in RAM.
Test your net with Netalyzr
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?
I _am_ Jonathan Zdziarski and even I don't understand why this is news.
This was a side note I mentioned the other day, and has been something I've been grousing about for over a year. It's unnecessary, and a bit of a privacy leak that can be exploited by forensic examiners, but hardly news for the reasons already stated in the comments.
You must have a problem with .bash_history too, right? Caching your keystrokes! OMG!
I don't much like .bash_history, so I usually do this:
$ rm .bash_history /dev/null .bash_history
$ ln -s
Can I do something similar with the iPhone? Better not to have to think about it, even if it isn't incriminating.
Benjamin Franklin was talking about exactly this when he said:
"They who can give up essential privacy to obtain a little temporary eye-candy, deserve neither privacy nor eye-candy."
That man was way ahead of his time.
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
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.
While sensationalist and somewhat misleading, it is not entirely inaccurate. Truth is that while it is not a screenshot of everything, there are some things that anyone with physical access to your iPhone MAY be able to recover.
As a not so far-fetched example, if you happend to hit Home while viewing your encrypted data in an encrypted password/data storage app (like 1passwd), your encrypted data - which may be passwords to other locations - is now stored unencrypted on your hard drive without your knowledge and thus may be recovered.
Not a non-story.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Imagine using an iPhone for phone sex? I see it now:
iPhone: it watches you masturbate.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
I had a glitch occur that put one of these screen shots in my photos collection. I was wondering what kind of glitch would have generated a screenshot. Now that is partially explained.
The kind that have more disposable income than brains.
Where exactly do I put the black tape to block a screen shot????
I have no problem with Apple doing this to make a cool effect. I wonder if it will be the same in iPhone 2.1
How this is different than your Firefox cache (which is worst, privacy wise IMO) or *gasp* any other graphical GUI effect ?| Slow news day ? And BTW, any IT forensic who has access to the machine can do whatever the fsck he/she want. Are we gonna encrypt the graphical effect's screenshots now ? WTF people, Wake up!
... There is a new Metallica album day, you guys should talk about that. Geeks love Metal too ya know!
Let Apple be for a minute
This is a stolen sig.
The iPhone doesn't have a page file. It doesn't swap anything to disk.
It really is no surprise that someone with the screename "lysergic acid" takes issue with being a crook because of illegal drug possession, but how the fuck did this get modded up?
YES possessing illegal drugs makes one a crook. Deal with it, because it's reality. I really don't see how an intelligent person could openly wonder how doing the very thing that makes one a crook could cause one to be called a crook.
Now, you can argue over whether you should be a crook, but that's not what was done here.
Second, save the vacuous "alcohol" argument. I'll wager anything you want that in a random survey, the majority of respondents will indeed say alcohol is a drug, so I don't know who you think is deluding themselves besides you.
Next, why are you even bringing up alcohol? If you want to decriminalize drugs, then make the case. Aim for what you want, and save the attempts at drawing equivalence. Saying "a drug that is easily and readily available does more damamge than drugs that are much more rare and difficult to obtain" isn't much of a point outside of a smoke filled dorm room.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
If I lived in a house with all of that screaming, I'd probably be violent, too.....
Layne
Turns out iPhone is really iKnowWhatYouDidPhone!
""They who can give up essential privacy to obtain a little temporary eye-candy, deserve neither privacy nor eye-candy.""
That was beautiful, man.
The only distinction between a "screenshot" and "buffering an image" is that in the case of a "screenshot" a file is produced on disk. In this case it's probably a .png file. Since the iPhone has plenty of resources to cache the image in RAM, it does seem weird that the image needs to be written to disk. The code that transitions to the Main Menu could be architected in many ways:
1. The code is in the Main Menu itself. It takes a screenshot as soon as it starts up, draws its own display in an offscreen buffer, and does a simple transition between the two images using the high-level animation methods.
2. A separate process takes the snapshot for the benefit of the Main Menu process, which then draws its own display in an offscreen buffer and does a simple transition between the two images using the high-level animation methods.
3. The Main Menu takes screen snapshots both before it exits and just as it starts up, and simply uses these two static images to accomplish the animation effect. This would be the simplest implementation.
4. The application launcher handles all the transitions, intercepting the first draw of the application interface within the application runtime, or as part of AppKit's implementation of mainNibDidLoad. The Main Menu process is the parent of all application processes. Animation between apps might be handled by an independent process or thread.
Perhaps some iPhone developer can shed light on which of these is most likely. The existence of a screenshot file only implies that data needs to be shared between processes, and that simple high-level API's are being used.
Applying my Slashdot headline filter, my sense of the original article - which I haven't read - is that, if you're looking to secure and encrypt everything on your phone (for safety!) this is one more thing you should remember to securely delete.
In terms of taking the customer's desires seriously, the main questions all this raises with me are: How soon can we get fully encrypted iPhones? And: can we get them without an NSA back-door? Or better yet: can we get an open source encryption plugin framework, and roll our own?
The companies who provide phones and data networks are only just beginning to get a working system together. They're just happy it works at all most of the time. Encrypting everything is going to require a lot more computational power throughout, which no one wants to sacrifice because it hurts performance. In order to get everything encrypted, companies would need to fight all the special interests that see advantage in removing the private citizen's expectation of privacy. They don't have any compelling interest in taking on that fight.
I would argue that there's a constitutional basis for demanding that universal encryption be a goal of all communication devices, and that it be considered in every new protocol. It should be as difficult as possible to install electronic eavesdropping, whether for your neighbor or for the FBI. That would be an exemplary bit of American justice, gaining us all more liberty, privacy, and security.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Forensics on RAM are much harder, because it would probably be a single cached screenshot, so you don't HAVE history, only the current ones.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I still want to know how to consume alcohol via the display of my iPhone
That was my bad I was too drunk to realize that...
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
I can't watch the video, however are the screenshots just left in RAM? Or are there actual files saved somewhere?
"Videoaping this crime spree was the best idea we ever had!"
I wrote a little app to fill the cache with screenshots of the IRS web pages. Anyone tries to investigate me, they'll have to carefully examine Publication 936, the instructions for Schedule F1, the guidelines for reporting "nanny" wages, and the like. Even if they aren't literally bored to death, they definitely won't want to look any further.
Over the home key.
You can with the iBeer app.
(sorry, I tried to find the link)
No. Not more trivial than walking down to the store.
In fact, it would take a particularly ignorant, intentionally disingenuous person to argue that getting pot is anywhere near as easy as getting booze.
Next, the reason people think pot is a gateway drug is the same reason people think running around in the cold causes the flu (I SAID FLU THERE PEDANTS, SO FUCK OFF). they're ignorant and are repeating bullshit they've had drilled into them.
It of course never occurs to you people that it may in fact have nothing to do with the drug and simply be a consequence of well ingrained patterns of behavior that lead to drug taking.
No way!
Last, I don't need to "know where to look" for booze, as they have whole stores devoted to it. I could even ask someone I don't know while I'm passing them on the street.
In short, everything you said is wrong.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
I for one would prefer to not have a camera on my Macbook and to have the iSight as a separate product. the only time I've used he actual camera I've actually picked the whole laptop up and waved it at the object I was needed to take a picture of.
Do many people really use the cameras in their Macbooks and iMacs? It seems like a supremely useless (and narcissistic) design to have a camera that you can only use part of the time and only to take a picture of yourself.
iPhone protector/cover thingy ... with a lens cap!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
OSX also does that little shrinking animation when you minimize a window. I wonder if the same flaw is in OSX?
Young kids tend to love the built in camera, especially using it with the Photobooth application. The Grandparents love video-chat with the grandkids. Everybody in-between in age thinks it's a waste of money.
I've used the built-in camera in my Macbook exactly once so far.
Or iPint which is a free app
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
I did look in a dictionary, and it said
"a person who engages in criminal activity for personal gain"
and since "getting high" is inarguably "personal gain", it appears I didn't make an ass of myself.
I bet you wish now that you could say the same.
Next I don't care why you brought up alcohol, it's a dead end argument and you should dump it. You don't sound intelligent when you make it, you sound like every other 12 year old when they realize laws are sometimes hypocritical and contradictory.
The reat of your post isn't worth addressing, but I have to say you look pretty silly making a claim that is refuted by the very post you're replying to.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
Hate to break it to you, but if you check the post I made to OP, you'll see a definition that clearly applies to illegal drug users.
Now, do you really want to argue definitions when everry definition of "crook" would have to be inapplicable to illegal drug users for you to be right, while I only need one (which I've already found) to be right?
Don't argue definitions (especially of slang and vernacular) it just makes you just sound like a tool (and yes, I'm including myself in that right now).
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
The iPhone doesn't have a page file. It doesn't swap anything to disk.
...whoosh?
So my iPhone takes a 'screen' shot of EVERYTHING I do? This is disturbing to say the least. Let's say, for example, I am sitting on the crapper. Does my iPhone take the shot at the beginning, or at the end? That would be good to know. Also, what if left my iPhone in the other room, you know, for privacy. Will my iPhone take a screen shot of me not being in the room, but in another room, you know, doing something? Wow! Everything I do? It's mind-boggolin g (sp?)
The phone swaps an image to the disk so it can later be used in compositing. It's nothing new you know. Virtual memory's been around for aeons, and looking through an unencrypted swapfile to find incriminating information isn't exactly new either.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Jealous much?
Chuck
Just curious...why would you think it stupid for a parent to get a kid an iPhone? That way they'd be giving them an iPod and phone in one fell swoop.
Hell, when I was a teen.....I was working, and if they had them in my day...I'd have bought my own.
But really....are you saying buying a phone in general for a kid is stupid or just if it is an iPhone that is stupid?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yeah, but I am Spartacus!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
You'll no doubt be shocked to learn that even though you might empty your Recycle Bin there are some thing that anyone with physical access to your computer MAY be able to recover.
Thank you, that's the point. I DO know that about files *I* create and *I* delete and I can delete them securely if I choose to. What I did NOT know is that something is capturing screenshots of what I am doing and saving them without my knowledge. Generally this sort of a behavior is reserved for spyware, rootkits and other malware. I realize it is not intended as such, but neither was the Sony DRM rootkit a while back.
I would guess most people would have an issue to have a keylogger installed on their computers. This is no different..
(the word may is in all caps for the imbeciles reading, and because some of us are unable to detect when we are being patronizing)
Ok, but there MAY be something vaguely self-referential about that....
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Joking aside, the article is puzzling and it reeks of FUD: if the iCrooks were bad enough to get the authorities
The police nabbing crooks is good. But the concern is about what happens if the crooks steal an iPhone. Are the passwords still secure? So far, people have been assuming that if they use a third part password manager that's reasonably well written, their passwords are secure. Now, it turns out, that if you look up a password and then close the application with the Home button, your password is being captured and stored unencrypted in a screenshot.
This fool doesn't even present any evidence that this 'screenshot' is -ever- even written to storage. Sure, it has to be in RAM to be shown zooming away, but the same thing applies to showing anything on the screen at all. Just because it saves processing power to capture an image instead of zooming the live app like OS X does, doesn't imply that the image ever leaves volatile RAM.
- written from my iphone.
When did people start eBaying 5-digit UIDs?
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
How can you NOT think of the CHILDREN!?! This is definitive. The children can only be safe by banning iPhones.
It's a terrible price we all must pay...but when you next see a child not being raped or murdered, you'll know you did your part to make that happen, and it will all be worth it.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Exactly what went through my head. Followed immediately by, "Should I see how much they are?".
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Well, ok...but, do realize...today, more so than when I was a kid....they do like status things. When I was a kid (back in the dark ages)...it was Polo shirts...I didn't have many, my folks didn't have that kind of cash, but, I begged and got a few for HS. Today...I dunno what clothes it is, but, they also have all the electronic goodies out there they want..and an iPhone probably is one of them.
And you have to remember, there are a LOT of people out there, that to them, $400 or so is pocket change and isn't very much money...hence, junior will get one of those as a cell phone.
That being said (and I don't have any kids that I know of, and dread that possible knock on the door some day) I was shocked as of a year or so ago, that so many parents gave kids cell phones. I guess it was a miracle that as children in my day, we survived without being in touch 24/7 and ran wild all over the neighborhood and beyond.....but, I now see the change in society with parents fucking paranoid about their kids (God knows why, they dont' play outside any longer)....they all have them. And like I said above...to many people...an iPhone isn't that expensive...so, sure...they have them. All their friends do...etc...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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?
What the OS needs to do is pass free blocks to a scavenger routine that zeros and/or randomizes their contents before returning them to the system. If you're worried about overhead just do it whenever the system is idle.
But phones, notebooks, AND desktops could benefit from this simple security technique. It may not be perfect, but it would go a long way towards blocking many of the most common security hacks and attacks that depend -- essentially -- on digging through the garbage...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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?
Congratulations on just describing every major cell phone plan available in the United States. Considering Apple has been in the cell phone market for exactly 13 months now, I find it hard to blame them for a problem that has existed since cell phones became mainstream.
Well, ok...but, do realize...today, more so than when I was a kid....they do like status things.
What, so it would be better to buy them an $800 Nokia phone that has no status?
Credit is due to Wired's Gadget Lab for this report.
What? I can't assume Occam's Razor was a slick fold-up scooter?
The iPhone is pretty damn cheap in the UK compared to the USA, which is a first I must say. I envy your fuel costs, so cheap!
You don't see it because it proves you wrong.
Of course, I explained it thoroughly, so when you say "I don't see it" what you mean is "fuck I'm wrong, I'll pretend the obvious and irrefutable prrof I'm wrong isn't there"
But it is.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
Not so sadly I didn't bother to read anything past your ridiculous attempt to fabricate a definition for the word crook.
Argue with the dictionary dude, it will care more about your verbose spewing far more than I do.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
there aren't any strawmen and your points are all wrong.
If you had actually read the discussion you decided to trample all over, you'd see that the discussion was about whether the definition of "crook" applies to people who use illegal drugs.
This was clear from the beginning and even more clear by the time you posted.
Additionally, the statement was not "possessing drugs" it was specifically
"it may be ILLEGAL to own certain drugs, but that doesn't make drug users CROOKS"
I'd read past the first sentence in the future, that way you won't look stupid like you did this time.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
"Well, ok...but, do realize...today, more so than when I was a kid....they do like status things."
They like them just as much its just the things have changed. Back in the day the 100$ sneakers was the thing, or a gameboy, ..., ...
"And you have to remember, there are a LOT of people out there, that to them, $400 or so is pocket change and isn't very much money...hence, junior will get one of those as a cell phone."
The median American household income is 50K, or close to 1,000 a week before taxes and about 700 after taxes. Not too many people consider three days labor 'pocket change'. Especially people with kids!
The problem is parents not amking their kids work for crap, back in teh day when I wanted the super nintendo in the 8th grade my Parets told me to get a job! So I did..
Now when I had the chance to visit China with my school and I could only earn 2K of the3K needed my parents stepped up and provided me with the extra money, its not that my parents could not afford to help with the SNES its that they sure as hell were not going to spend good money on a video game system but they would do it for a life changing experience.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari