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Apple Denies FBI Had Access To UDIDs
First time accepted submitter WIn5t0n writes "Just a day after the alleged leak of 12million Apple UDID's, both Apple and FBI have denied the story that Anonymous, a global hacking community, gained access to the files by hacking into an FBI laptop through a Java vulnerability. Earlier this morning the FBI claimed that, even though the agent cited in Anonymous's story is an actual FBI operative, neither he nor anyone else in the agency has or has had access to Apple device information. This afternoon Apple followed up on the FBI's statement, with an unidentified Apple representative claiming that, 'The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization.' It should also be noted that while the hackers claim to have accessed 12 million UDID's, only 1 million were publicly released. The Apple representative who made the previous statements also said that, 'Apple has replaced the types of identifiers the hackers appear to have gotten and will be discontinuing their use.' Even though neither Anonymous nor the FBI/APPLE will admit where the data actually came from, it does appear that at least some of the leaked UDID's are legit and can be tied back to current, privately owned devices. So far no information besides the devices UDID, DevToken ID, and device name has been released, however the original hackers claimed that some devices were tied to details as exact as phone numbers and billing addresses."
So Apple says that the FBI doesn't have access to UDIDs but a bunch of script kiddies do? Is this a really poor reflection on the abilities of the FBI or do Apple's PR people have an IQ matching the number of buttons on the magic mouse?
Of course that is what they would say.
You are not allowed to say one way or the other if you have a National Security letter (demand) issued...
Someone's not being truthful about all this. Scary that my first thoughts are Apple and the FBI first over anonymous hackers! So they've got a million from /somewhere/ then. If not the FBI, next logical guess would be Apple, where else could they be from? (maybe a carrier? Are they all on the same network I wonder?)
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Anonymous claims to be a bunch people with like aims and no leadership. So this may be just some person who happened to get hold of the info and published it claiming to be Anonymous or Anti-sec or whomever. The claim that the data came from the FBI is unsupported - proof would be some additional data from the same system such as logs, etc. which have not been produced.
My personal guess is that the most likely source is some social networking site and the guy is saying it's the FBI as some sort of disinformation. It's possible but unlikely that both Apple and the FBI are outright lying about the source. There are all sorts of other possibilities.
I believe the new suggestion is to generate your own GUID on install and use that. It wouldn't identify the phone, but only the specific installation of your software on that device. If the device's owner deleted your application and then re-installed it, you'd have a new GUID.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
but the point is still the same.
The spirit of Sargeant Shultz lives on.
"Colonel Hogan! I know nothing! Nothing!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They are used for identifying a specific device, which can be used in turn as a type of account id. Each application on the device is completely separate from the others, if you have an application such as a social network the user would need to login separately for every app. This in itself, isn't so bad, the problem is that applications can tie this information to create databases that might tie together things. For instance, OpenFeint was using the UDID for single sign-in. A researcher found that the profile pictures from Facebook contained the Facebook userid. If a user using OpenFeint was using the Facebook profile image, then that UDID could be used to find the Facebook profile. OpenFeint fixed that loophole immediately by obscuring the URLs, but the general problem remained, anyone could write an app to gather UDID information and many did.
How to deanonymize with OpenFeint
There isn't any way that a user can stop an app from reading the UDID, a jailbroken phone can change them IIRC.
In response, Apple deprecated the UDID. Although many places have said that Apple rejects apps that use UDID, this is not completely true. Apple started rejecting apps that used UDID but didn't tell you. There are still many apps collecting the information.
There are a few alternatives, with varying degrees of success:
* Each app makes a GUID, stores locally. Which works great for one-off apps, but doesn't allow multiple apps to collate data (either a benefit or drawback depending on who you are). It also means you will lose data on a reset.
* use a different ID, such as MAC. Essentially the same thing, with the same drawbacks, not recommended.
* Facebook and other networks have started using a Cookie stored in Safari. This means that the registration actually leaves the application and returns to it using a specially crafted URL. This way, each app can simply round-trip to Safari to grab the cookie. Complicated, but it works
* Use UIPasteboard. This is an API that allows you to store information that other apps can read. It's sort of a hack, but some libraries are using it.
OpenUDID SecureUDID
So Apple says that the FBI doesn't have access to UDIDs but a bunch of script kiddies do?
Yes, that's in fact very easy to believe. All it would take is for the script kiddies to break into some server of an app that used UDID's for tracking users logged into an application that transmitted UDID's to the server as a kind of cookie... many developers used to do that, which is why Apple stopped allowing UDID's to be used by developers. It's really easy to believe a script kiddie stumbled on to such a list on some server.
The FBI wouldn't have a lit of UDID's unless they had some kind of official request for them, but then why only 12 million? Why would they be on a laptop instead of back in some server somewhere? I have no doubt the FBI could get such a list if they had a reason to, but really the UDID is of such little use to do anything with why would they?
In the end the thing that makes me doubt the source, the number of devices in the list is pretty small compared to the number of devices around, but is just about right to be the records from some application using the UDID as weak authentication...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what types of identifiers do the use now
They don't. Each app has to use it's own, that way they are not the same across applications on the same device.
and what's the purpose of them anyway?
Mostly they are useful to permit specific devices to run development builds.
Over time some applications started to use the UDID as a weak kind of authentication, so a user would not have to log in or create an account. That's fine at first, but then you run into the problem if someone sells a device it would seem like the original user to the application.
Some did use it for simple tracking, to try and understand the chain of commands a single user was doing across sessions. I believe some advertising systems did use them also, and then they could use them to track who was the same person across apps... that cannot be done anymore in iOS6.
Can you override/deactivate them?
Before, no. In the new system if you delete an app it should have to regenerate a new unique ID (if it even uses one).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry guys, this should have been in the original post but somehow (whether by my revisions or another's) it was left out. First of all the Apple representative has been identified as Natalie Kerris. Kerris, while discussing Apple's removal of the UDID, says this, "Additionally, with iOS 6, we introduced a new set of A.P.I.’s meant to replace the use of the U.D.I.D. and will soon be banning the use of U.D.I.D.” . So currently all devices are still operating with UDID's, and will continue too do so until the entire program is removed once the GM of iOS 6 is approved and released, probably around early October
Which is more likely, that these guys were able to break into a specific FBI laptop, or into one of scores of servers that had this kind of list on it?
The simplest answer is they did not get it from the FBI at all, they just want to hurt the FBI by claiming they did. And they have lots of cause to want to screw over the FBI.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not the allegation that Apple gave the FBI that information. They never said that Apple gave it over to the FBI. The filename allegedly stolen was NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv , which means it came from the NCFTA, not from Apple.
Why won't they ask Apple if they handed it to the NCFTA or that the NCFTA requested it? Then let's see what they have to say...
They did not deny that they had this information, they actually denied that it was on any FBI laptops. (Carefully worded to exclude personally owned laptops by FBI officials)
Zing!
So, the FBI says "we didn't have that information". Apple says "The FBI never requested that information from us". Anonymous says "The FBI had the information".
What I'm getting from this:
* You can't trust any of these organizations to be 100% honest, but they all frequently integrate a bit of truth with each lie, so you can't completely disregard what any one of them says.
* Any, and up to two of them concurrently, could be telling the whole truth, but given their individual track records with honesty, you can't take what they're saying at face value.
One possibility is that the FBI did have the information, that they did not go about getting it through "legal" channels, and that Apple did not know that the FBI had the information. Anonymous "liberating" the information could be their way of forcing everybody's hands about dishonesty, government-instigated corporate espionage, and information security on a massive scale.
Another possibility is that the FBI acquired the information via legal channels and that Apple and the FBI don't want to admit it because the social and political repercussions. Again, Anonymous plays the same role as in the above scenario.
Yet another possibility is that Anonymous "acquired" the information from sources other than the FBI and are using it to rattle somebody's cage or play some type of misdirection.
In the end, data that was thought to be secure was made public, and this has put more than a few people's feet on the fire for it.
The sad thing is that it probably won't be known for sure who's telling the truth because each organization won't want to show more of their hand than they already have. This means that the problems that led to this, whatever and wherever they may be, probably won't be fixed.
If these files had anything of any use to anyone, I would be suspicious right there with you.
But these files are basically useless. For around a year now applications cannot eve access the UDID or submissions to the app store will be blocked. In iOS6 it's totally blocked. That's the thing in the end that convinces me the FBI is not involved, because this data is of no real use to them at all, not even for keeping tabs of future mobile device use. And again, the number of devices they have here also makes very little sense in terms of being something the FBI would have collected - the FBI should have a complete list of hundreds of millions of devices, not just 12 million.
When things are confused, the simplest answer is usually correct. There is no simple answer as to how they were obtained from an FBI laptop or why the FBI would have such a pointless list of data, whereas anon skimming these files off some hapless server IS a very simple aswer as to how they have this data.
If it had names & addresses & SSN for everyone, then I'd start wondering. But this scattershot file of mostly useless identifiers is just pointless to risk the furor of Congress (who they will have to answer to if lying) to acquire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I still don't understand why they can't just generate a UDID per device per app—but always the same. Would solve some of the worse problems without affecting convenience that much.
This all a bunch of nonsense! This was probably just a list from a given vendor. Track this down by doing the following:
Look for the ID's and find the most recent date one that you can. That gives you the date range that this is relevant for.
Look at the ID's and match them to locations? Are they all from the US? That might give credence to FBI angle (which I think is bullocks).
Look at the ID's and start matching users.
Look for commonality between said users, this far too large of a list of users to simply be a list of OWS protestors (sorry, if OWS was ever that large on just apple users alone OWS would have succeeded instead of being a punch line). Your doing this just to exclude conspiracy theories like a national we spy on people with shiny toys conspiracy theory.
Once you've concluded that there isn't anything in common between most of these people you can't start the real work:
Start matching the common thing or applications between those users. You will probably discover something really benign like they they all have AT&T accounts that belong to the western part of the US or they all have the Twitter application or something really boring.
The actual official press release from the FBI, the only statement that matters, didn't deny it, it says "at this time there is no evidence". It was a non denial denial. Apple are simply trying to fix the non-denial denial.
But I agree with you, it is likely a rogue app, or an App with a very bad EULA captured the data. It is also likely the FBI got it as part of an investigation into that app.
Now they should try to match up the common app and then we will know more.
That's the reason why the list is utterly pointless. It cannot be used going forward to correlate anything.
This leaves us with only two possibilities:
The paranoid in me tells me that the former is not very likely, but the latter is a near certainty.
Also note that if the table does not have the home address or the phone or the SSN of the owner then it means exactly nothing. The ID of the record can be a foreign key in some other table or a view. Or you can type a query with a JOIN simply by hand. That's how things are supposed to be anyway. For example, one person owns two phones, or two people share one phone, or there are three family members and four phones that they carry interchangeably.
Also, if the 3rd party software is no longer allowed to use this data it does not mean that the OS itself cannot access it and use in some nefarious ways. Fact is, if the information is out there then it is (or was) used by someone for some purpose. If existence of the purpose is actively denied it only makes things worse.