Slashdot Mirror
iPhones Bricked By Setting Date To Jan 1, 1970 (theguardian.com)
lightbox32 writes: Beware of a hoax circling the interwebs, which can be seen by setting your iPhone's date to January 1, 1970. Many people are reporting that doing so will brick the device. It's unclear what exactly causes the issue, but could be related to how iOS stores date and time formats. Jan. 1, 1970 is a value of zero or less than zero, which would make any process that uses a time stamp to fail. Apple is aware of the issue and is looking into it.
It's recoverable just by letting the battery run out, or disconnecting the battery (harder but faster) Bricking is when you permanently break the device.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The thing that bothers me about all of the summaries I've read, is that a timestamp less than zero (which is Jan 1 1970) is still valid - otherwise how would you represent dates before 1970???
I don't know what is going on but a timestamp being merely "less than zero" seems alone to not be a problem, it's how some other part of the system is dealing with this timestamp. Perhaps someone somewhere in the system frameworks shifted from a timestamp (which is really a double internally in iOS) to some kind of large unsigned int?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No problem. You can reset your iPhone to factory default by placing it in a microwave oven on high for 2 minutes. ;-)
Have gnu, will travel.
https://xkcd.com/376/
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I can understand why one would need to use that date as test data for an application, but why would anyone set their system date to that in the first place? (Not that I'm apologizing for Apple, that's a pretty stupid bug...)
I'm always curious about how such things come about. Did some kid go "Oh! I know, lets see how far back the iPhone can go! LOL YOLO"
The editor's momma made them to fail at Enlgish.
nm
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I love Elvis Costello!
I can't say how it's represented internally, but the iOS "epoch" time isn't 1970, it's 2001 (beginning of the third millennium) according to the doc. If this has anything to do with 1970 being the 0 time, there is a seriously uniformed programmer somewhere at Apple.
Just remembered from CD classes long time that this is Unix start time. Wonder if this is related
-1 word salad
Isn't a hoax when you've been tricked. The article clearly states "curious" people allegedly bricked their phones by testing that the bug does indeed brick the phone. I think stupid is a better word than curious.
Duh, it's because the first hand-held cell phone didn't exist until 1973. The iPhone believes it has gone back in time, and is trying to prevent damage to the space-time continuum from a sudden intrusion of 21st century tech into the past.
They remind me so frequently that I don't need to make anything good to profit from it.
An epoch bug... in this day and age... it's like they're trying to be intentionally terrible.
I know "robust against pathological clock-frobbing" was the main factor that drove me to choose Android.
It's not unusual to see some timestamp issues. It is unusual to see a device crippled so sharply by that. It's VERY unusual for Apple to allow such a range of values- this is the same company that doesn't normally even provide options like "make unread mail appear green instead of blue" or whatever.
But most disturbing is that this would allow any source the iphone trusts for timestamps to mostly disable the phone. I'm not sure whether the iphone prefers to get data from a trusted NTP server or some part of the 3G standard, or if it supports all of that, but it implies that you could...
1- (as just some guy) Set up a wifi network that spoofs whatever the trusted NTP server is, and then assign the epoch date that way. ...and of course a more sophisticated attacker could probably do more.
2- (possibly as some hackery type) Find any way to do the equivalent at a greater level.
3- (as some radio phreak) Find a way to spoof the epoch date with a bogus 3G transmitter.
Your iPhone went back in time, and experimented with lsd and shrooms. Apple is working on a fix to decrease the iPhone addiction tendencies and/or tolerance to psychedelic drugs.
The headline is confusing, is it a hoax or is it true?
I practically guarantee you...
The problem is with a long or int (32 bit) value having its address passed in for a time_t (64 bit) value.
As long as the number is positive, it appears to work, but if it goes negative (and given that most of the people setting it to that date are West of GMT, it *will* go negative), then the underflow blows all the adjacent bits in the next 32 bit word over.
And it appears that something important was there. This will likely be a problem for the code after 19 January 2038, if that's the case.
This is why there should be strong type enforcement set in the compiler settings, to make sure it doesn't compile if you have this kind of bug in your code.
This should be a trivial fix, but it's pretty clear that you could fix the problem on your own by temporarily disconnecting the battery and/or letting the battery drain (which would likely take a very long time). So take it into your local Apple store and be done with it.
I just tried it with my one and only iPhone and it locked up just as the article said it would.
Oh wait...
Okay guys, calm down. Assuming iOS is really based on OS X, I'll test something on my Mac right this instant.
Setting the clock to january first 1970 right noW. I DO NOT SEE ANY DIFFERENCE.
OH WAIT, ALL THE COLOURS ARE GONE. IN FACT I THINK THE RESOLUTION IS WAY DOWN AND I'M ONLY SEEING PURE BLACK AND WHITE PIXELS.
Its also bullshit on iOS 9.2.1.
I just set it to exactly midnight EPOCH, I set it to before epoch and I set it back to now. Rebooted multiple times all along the way.
My phone works fine.
I got kicked out of anything authenticated the instant I did the change since doing so effectively renders every certificate on the device invalid as it is suddenly years before the certs were 'issued' but thats exactly as expected.
I pretty much can't find any truth in the story. It claims you can't scroll back that far in the date/time picker without open and closing multiple times, yet here I am with just a bunch of finger flicks looking at the date/time as Dec 1969 right this very moment and I did so without having to enter it multiple times.
Dear slashdot, you have been trolled. Please stop believing the random shit you read on the internet.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So, over the span of 2 days, it's not recoverable without opening up the device and removing hardware ... That, sir, is pretty damn close to being a brick.
This demonstrates why the Windows Phone is clearly a superior platform.
In order to brick that, you would have to set its date all the way back to January 1, 1601. That allows the user to live in many more interesting historical eras.
Using older versions of browsers with infected sources of information may help to find exploits of newest browsers.
Well, make an encryption algorithm that depends on time, make the statistics to know what would happen before the 80's... And here we have a lack of limitation to make anyone (in this case nobody is) who lives in the 70's.
New EPOC? Anyone? (please don't...)
This is just Apple's way of forcing users to upgrade their phones before Jan 1 1970 rolls around.
If there was ever a situation that called for a, "Then don't do that." response this is it.
Outside of software quality testing, a valid reason to lie to your computer about the current time, doesn't come to me.
I know! I'll set the date to next week and run the Stock Ticker app. Profit!
Well, according to the man page of time(), if the timestamp is negative
Like I said - it can be negative.
Read about it here
Yes I already know that hence pointing out it can be negative.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At least on a PHONE? The cellular network provides a very high quality time signal to begin with, probably better than the internal clock can deliver. AFAIK it's also the iPhone default.
The only reason I can see why you would want to would be to lock the time zone to a specific one different from the one you're in (iPhone seems to set the timezone either via GPS or from the cell network). OK, maybe this is someone's preference, but every time I have done something similar out of my timezone it always fucks me up to be out of sync with local time.
And why on earth would you want to be on a different date?
I've said it again and again, consumer devices should be de-brickable.
Business devices too for that matter.
They should all have a "factory reset jumper" or similar that resets the machine - or at least the non-replaceable parts of the machine - to factory conditions.
I can think of three exceptions to this rule:
* Things that must not be wiped due to legal reasons or fraud-prevention reasons, like a hard drive's in-use-hours, should not be wiped,
* Certain "write once" storage, such a log of reported thefts, should not be wiped, and
* if the consumer explicitly shoulds a different jumper, the ability to do a factory reset is permanently lost, rendering the device "brickable." Some users may want their devices to wipe their secuity keys and brick themselves if they are reported stolen or after too many unsuccessful logins in a row as a way to discourage theft.
On an iPhone, this might mean booting from a "restore" boot loader that would wipe the real boot loader, storage, ram, security, and everything else not "burned in" as "read only" at the factory or which wan't on the "no wipe" list such as a carrier-lock or powered-on-hour then set variables like the clock to sane albeit incorrect factory-default values. It would also preserve things normally "off limits" or "read only" to the bootloader and iOS for legal reasons (such as radio hardware). Then it would restore the regular bootloader and Apple security credentials from ROM and copy a temporary "iOS-restore" mini-operating system from ROM into storage and reboot. On the next boot, the special "iOS restore" OS would tell the user to either plug the USB cable into a PC running iTunes or to connect to the internet using USB, WiFi, or Bluetooth then it would load the real iOS from iTunes or an Apple internet server, then, after verifying the iOS was properly signed, set it so it would boot from the just-downloaded iOS and reboot. Sure, it would take awhile, and yes, all user data would be lost, but at least the phone would be usable.
On a PC with non-soldered RAM and disk or SSD storage, those devices would not need to be wiped as part of the machine's de-bricking routine - if those parts are contributing to the problem, the consumer can replace them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They will have gotten around to signing it one of these epochs, eventually. Maybe on January 1, 1970.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In Soviet Russia iPhone kills you!
"Set your phones back to 1970 and they brick"
:sets phone back:
:phone bricks:
scene
Hoax would imply that people are telling you that you can win Angry Birds by setting it back to 1970 or something. While this is an issue I'm confused by the "hoax" element?
Will I knew Apple crap fones were just that Crap, and phony in every degree of the presentation.. Big example "siri"
moving past that,
This announcement just fortifies my statement to another degree..
Perhaps it was because Jobs was such a bully, they managed to miss this right as he pushed to "greater things" Like "siri"
snicker..
If it bricks your device, then it's real, not a hoax.
Maker Communication is one of the most popular event management firm in Bangladesh. Maker is basically organized IT related event & fair.(http://www.makercommunication.com/)
Still trying to figure out why you would set your phone to this date to begin with? Kind of like the Y2K thing I guess, I'm sure its fixable and over hyped as a real issue.
Definitely a trend in Apple news of negative stories of late. From iPhone 6's bricking, to Apple's stock demise from lack of real innovation. Almost every successful company falls from grace eventually.
Time traveling iPhones.
Simply disconnect your battery for 15 minutes and then you'll be able to restore your iPhone.
The medium is the message
I have always been prejudiced against Apple, and now I'm seeing why.
I don't want to own an iBrick.
UNIX HAS A PROBLEM IN 2038 - John Titor http://www.bing.com/search?q=%...
I have seen iPhones stuck at the "locked out, try again in 24758383 minutes" or something to that effect a lot.
Doing the calculation, you find that counting backwards from the present date (at the time of lock-out message), you find that the wait time posted counts back to December 31st, 1969.
Same thing happens when you disconnect the battery. The device sets the time to December 31st, 1969, which I think might be the earliest date the device has a value for.
Apparently January 1st, 1970 was just an overall shitty day.
I let my iPhone die and when I hold in the lock button it shows the battery dead and the plug in cord does that mean completely dead do I plug it in and try and restart it..?? And yes I'm an idiot and actually tried it before reading any forums on it
Sell your bricked piece of shit and buy an Android phone, which does not have this problem.
Solved.
Yeah, you will have to set your Android to UNIX end-of-times so it will crash. https://www.reddit.com/r/Andro...