Very cool demos, but now I'm interested to know: does enabling Lockdown mode help at all against these exploits? It'll theoretically protect against a lot of common attack vectors, but I'm curious about its real-life effectiveness.
yes for PDFs in iMessage where would be blocked, not sure in Signal though. No idea for 3rd one.
These are still 1-click, not zero click. So the best protection you can have is not opening unknown files that were sent to you. That being said, lockdown mode blocks all sorts of message attachments. From the videos it look like they are using pdfs in the messaging vector, which would get blocked too. So you would be safe-ish. But lockdown mode is so restrictive that it doesn't really make sense for most users. Or at least it doesn't make sense to buy a $1500 phone and then limit yourself to something you could have gotten for $50.
You don’t know what lockdown is do you? I’ve had my phone in lockdown for a year. I can’t: collaborate on notes, and it does not automatically open links in chat. Other than that my experience is identical to non lockdown.
I guess you don't browse any modern webpages? Otherwise I can't explain your perspective. You basically lose up to 95% of performance in anything remotely resembling a JS heavy web app. So it would run the same as on a cheap Android phone.
My experience has been the iPhone chip is fast enough to still run pages just fine. Maybe those ones that load 300 adverts and relay out the page 5 times as they load won’t work but they hardly worked before anyway.
Everything that runs with such a major performance decrease will also run fine on a cheap phone. If this is your normal use case that's fine, but it simply means you also didn't need such a powerful Iphone in the first place. It's like buying an RTX5090 and then playing 2048 in a browser and saying you don't understand why people always install Nvidia drivers.
i run Vanadium on GraheneOS with javascript JIT off (the default configuration) and it's fine basically everywhere
Send me a webpage that you can’t view in lockdown. I haven’t had a single problem. I guess I’m just not really relevant in your eyes.
Turkish Airlines site does not load in Lockdown mode. Users cannot log in at rei.com with Lockdown mode on.
Breaking is not the issue (at least most of the time), but the performance loss is <i>everywhere</i>.
it's very rare that they break but there's some popular ones like booking.com<p>in my experience like maybe <5% of the web break
You lose a lot: <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120</a>
some sites don't work (you can explicitly whitelist them tho) but generally it's been fine. i would honestly prefer a phone that doesn't allow any comms to any non-contact list parties at this point.
Doesn't seem like a lot according to the description and pretty much what I would set by default.
> Web browsing: Certain complex web technologies are blocked, which might cause some websites to load more slowly or not operate correctly. In addition, web fonts might not be displayed, and images might be replaced with a missing image icon.<p>Images being replaced with a missing image icon doesn't seem like a lot according to the description, and it's what you would set by default?
Yeah what I want is a configurable version of lockdown mode where I can have my agent sync my allowlist with my hardware.<p>Like give me the list of what I can turn on and off, and then let me choose my lockdown sphere.<p>That’s the future, and it’s coming.
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My only gripe with lockdown mode is that my banking app loads icons from some source that ends up being blocked.<p>Quite annoying. I've tried to explain it to them, but to no avail.
> had my phone in lockdown for a year. I can’t: collaborate on notes<p>That's your own mistake, because you <i>can</i> collaborate on Notes while your iPhone is in Lockdown
I would still be using lockdown mode if the call notifications were send to my Apple Watch. Other than that lockdown mode was working pretty good for me.
It works great for me too.<p>But there are weirdnesses.<p>For example, you can't add a person to phone favorites.
I can send my friends a PDF of a restaurant's menu over iMessage. I think that wouldn't work for you?
I use Lockdown Mode and the functionality I get is nothing like a $50 device. If you're being serious can you link to some $50 devices for sale that are on par with a recent iPhone Pro running in Lockdown Mode?
N=1 from my own experience but other than occasionally disabling it in Safari for websites it seems to work flawlessly for me. I've had it on MacOS and iOS for about a year now.
I’d bet the security of those $50 phones is worse than an iPhone <i>without</i> lockdown mode.
#3 is so nice, I want root access to <i>my</i> phone. Does anyone know if doing this can lock Apple out from updating/removing it?
Subverting the secure boot/upgrade chain would require a SecureROM exploit and presumably a compromise of the Secure Enclave, so the answer is almost certainly "no" (even prior major exploits from recent memory like usbliter8 are tethered and don't exploit the enclave; the last true untethered Jailbreak was iOS 9 or something.) An upgrade would fix it. The internet reporting claims this break they are showing in this video is untethered though, which is extremely rare on its own.
Genuinely, why have an iPhone in the first place if you want this?
The magnificent hardware. That's why I bought a macbook and that's why I'm planning to switch to an iPhone.
It's good to have that option for every phone out there.
I know a bunch of people that would use iPhones if iPhones had first class private backup options (the de-iclouding, like the de-googling of androids). Having root on the device would make this an option.
What are alternatives? I keep thinking I want something I can run vibed apps on, especially something grok bot right on device.
I run vibed apps on my iphone just fine - you have to register for a developer account and pay the annual fee, but I have an agent app running that can improve itself and push new versions over wifi just fine.<p>I even have realtime watch complications which no shipping app can have because of apple restrictions - developer mode lets you push complication updates realtime if you want.<p>I'll probably consider something more open next time I buy but just pointing out that right now with a developer account you're not actually _that_ restricted on iOS, the experience is better than you might think if you're making an app you never intend to ship.
you can load your custom apps by usb onto any android phone.
The videos sort of imply that these are userland rather than bootrom, whatever payload they have running is getting hit before first unlock, which isn't a lot of surface. They specifically say to not update which pretty much confirms where the attack surface is. Somewhere after the kernel starts but before the main user space is unlocked with the passcode.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I disagree.<p>I want the freedom to install the OS I want on <i>my</i> phone. Now if I install a proprietary OS, I get what the developers of that proprietary OS choose to do. And if that proprietary OS does not give me root access, well, that's life.
> I want the freedom to install the OS I want on my phone.<p>Probably your problem is that you have no phones, only someone's thin clients.
the fact this opinion is voted down, is clear proof HN is late to be renamed something else, because hacker it isn't
I once again am pointing to the sign that states this was never a l33t-hax0r board like you all think; it's <i>always</i> been an arm of one of the leading VC incubators.<p>Stop expecting differently.
I don’t think that hackers would agree to be locked out of a system, or do you mean they want to be locked out as a challenge? In any case you don’t get to choose which OS gets installed, so the parent’s opinion is hypothetical.
> In any case you don’t get to choose which OS gets installed<p>Of course you do. You can run GrapheneOS, or LineageOS, postmarketOS, or mobian, or many others. All of those are open source, you can modify them as you want before you flash them.
HN has and always will be majority lil VC money funded tech bros who know nothing about actual hacking
“I want root access to my phone” is a nonsensical statement on some level. It’s a device. The fact you have mistaken it for a Unix machine is your own delusion.<p>Did people used to get like this about pocket calculators or digital watches? “Why am I forced to be limited to only the manufacturer’s firmware?”
I don't disagree. However, I would be happy if the manufacturer of a pocket calculator or digital watch did not prevent me from installing my own system on it.<p>I guess it is <i>more</i> debatable for a pocket calculator or a digital watch, but IMO when I buy a smartphone, it should not be illegal for me to install whatever I want on it. And the manufacturer should not add technical measures to prevent me from doing it.<p>That does <i>NOT</i> mean that the manufacturer should implement the features I want (like root access) or go out of their way to give me tools to install my favourite OS. Just that they should not <i>prevent</i> me from doing it (say if I manage to reverse engineer the hardware). Because <i>I</i> own the hardware I buy. At least I should.
Dunno about you but I had to jailbreak my TI84 to run what I wanted to on it
Well the governments and supranational bodies who want to read your messages would be aghast at you having root on your phone.<p>Like we did on HTC G1s in 2008
What's with iOS and pdfs pwning them? Reminds me of the ForcedEntry in Pegasus.<p><a href="https://projectzero.google/2022/03/forcedentry-sandbox-escape.html" rel="nofollow">https://projectzero.google/2022/03/forcedentry-sandbox-escap...</a><p><a href="https://www.trendmicro.com/en_gb/research/21/i/analyzing-pegasus-spywares-zero-click-iphone-exploit-forcedentry.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.trendmicro.com/en_gb/research/21/i/analyzing-peg...</a>
PDF has been an entry point since forever, it is extremely complex and can in some cases even run javascript, it has a huge attack surface.
Its not just IOS. PDFs cause security problems everywhere where they are collected, and have been - for years.<p>We are running a service which collects documents from our consumers. We have a content disarm service which is basically a blast-proof container without any access rights, fed a stream of source bytes and outputting clean PDFs. Not a month passes without a burst of attempts at poisoning our systems with malicious PDFs. I don't remember when was the last time that we had attempts driven by malicious jpegs or pngs, just PDFs. Its one of those uber-shit Turing-complete file formats that should die long ago.
If it wasn't PDF it'd be something else. It's everything <i>after</i> the PDF that's alarming here - how did they break out of the app sandbox?
Too huge attack surface. Good candidate for victim trust (who would not open a pdf file on an iPhone?).<p>So pdf and images are the best vector for iPhones.<p>Once you escape the parser you have to reach and escape the sandbox and from there reach the kernel.
I wonder if pdf.js would be more secure since it runs inside a webpage and can benefit from the browser sandboxing. Though I guess iOS has generally managed to keep most of its apps native rather than web app wrappers (as has happened on Windows).
Well it was TIFF one time
Never mind - that only applied to origins PDF 1.x.
Does Lockdown block all PDFs?
pdf is the new swf
Maybe with LLMs a full rewrite that’s more secure could be done
LLM and full rewrite are a recipe for cooking something that still has flaws but also doesn't work that well. The root cause is that PDF is an old format from a more innocent era. A new document standard that keeps up with the technical and security advances, learns about the lessons PDF taught us, and allows for easy conversion from old PDFs, would be the ideal solution.<p>Who am I kidding, I think the PDF format will outlive us.
A full rewrite of what? iOS? I hope you’re kidding
Man, sucks to see these "hacked" iPhones doing so many cooler things than my Apple-approved one.
It’s a mix - for years I wanted root on my iPhones, just like you got on android. In practice, once I had it…? I never did much beyond installing Cydia.<p>With today’s hardware I might have a different take - the 18 has more than enough hardware to be a laptop so maybe I’d use it for a docking mode. But my gut is I’d probably still want a laptop even then.<p>To me the upshot is : billions of development, software and hardware, have gone into the platforms - it’s hard to quickly make them significantly better.
When I owned an iPod touch, the advantage of jailbreaking was to give your device certain features that the OS just didn't support. (Hell, I remember early days when iOS didn't even have a concept of wallpaper, the background was just black.)<p>iOS has come a long way since those days so a lot of the most common use cases of the past are no longer necessary. But the principle is the same - the hardware is a general-purpose computer but the software is locked down unnecessarily in many ways. Jailbreaking lets you do things that are outside of Apple's box.
A much-needed advantage is also keeping old devices useful. Every Apple phone slowly outlives its supported software to the point where the official AppStore has almost nothing in it. Today, it's extremely difficult to find 3P apps that work with my current iPhone 7, which is not that old, because the ecosystem cuts off old phones very quickly.
I agree, and, if you have a developer certificate from Apple, the list of wants I have is ... not that long? zero? I'd love to be pitched on it. In practice, I wanted freedom, but didn't really want to do anything with it.
Let me try to pitch you:<p>The value of general computing freedom is like any other freedom: it is needed when it people are trying to express you.<p>And not just you. Anyone! So evaluating whether a freedom is necessary turns into a much more nebulous question of “would anyone really need this at one point now or in the future? Is this a thing we should protect in general, even if it does seem like we need it exactly now?”<p>For example, could Apple/Google at one point be strong armed (by any government) into including spyware onto all devices? And listeners to make sure no one ever says bad things about $DEAR_LEADER?<p>If the probability of yes is anywhere around 10% over the next decade, maybe it’s a good freedom to have.
The equalizer is easily 20 years old, and is restricted to presets. Presets! A parametric EQ is the only thing that can make Apple's own Powerbeats Pro sound good. And for several golden years (despite lots of Apple's work against it) we had a really good jailbreak equalizer that worked with Apple Music. Eventually I just gave up on the whole thing. But I remember going out for trail runs with good sounding music without worrying about losing my earbuds.
This is one of several things I'm considering for an Apple Music client I'm writing (they are one of the few streaming services that actually allows such a complete level of API integration, via MusicKit). Apple Music as an app is pretty mediocre, but with a 3rd-party app you can add custom EQ profiles, and even detect the type of device when it connects over Bluetooth and apply the EQ profile automatically on the fly when it is connected, to add it to the DSP processing path.
> I never did much beyond installing Cydia.<p>Watusi was great, it let you disable the blue checkmark on Whatsapp. (Since been added as a setting)<p>I also used a tweak that let me auto-block certain phone prefixes that spammers used. Quite useful.<p>Was also useful that it allowed you to install multiple copies of an app (such as whatsapp), though no longer a need for that either.
I jailbroke every iPhone I had for many, many years. Most of the time it was silly skins/tweaks but there were a number of things that were huge QoL improvements. I remember BiteSMS and using it as a way to reply to a text directly in the notification instead of having to leave the app. This was before iOS had that feature and before multitasking, back when if you left the game you were playing the app would quit. Also had folders before stock iOS, things like Control Center, and a whole slew of little tweaks for other apps I used.<p>The downside to jailbreaking was often the instability but that was also back when the phones were way less powerful. Today, armed with LLMs, I would love to have root on my iPhone again. I'd love to rip out Siri and replace it with Claude Code or something like that.
There's just less reason today for someone like me that liked the utilitarian benefits of a jailbroken iPhone. I used it for gestures, caller mini preview, grouped notifications, etc. All things that are now baked in.
I just want to be able to run things like yt-dlp on iPhone
The only reason to do this today is to turn your iPhone into a tool for other nefarious purposes or clickbot type farms.
I'm for being able to hack your own device to do whatever you like with it, preferably without active resistance from its manufacturer. I'm against anybody who can convince you to open a PDF being able to hack your device to do whatever <i>they</i> like with it.
The point the parent commenter is making is that they want Apple to allow people the freedom to intentionally mod the functionality of their device. Not that they literally want single-click PDF exploits to be a thing.
Who is saying this?
iOS has enough zero-click exploits that you don't exactly get a choice between the two.
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What in these videos is so much cooler than what you can do on an Apple approved one? Other than, "As a programmer, I can do <i>anything</i>", I just personally don't see any capabilities unlocked that I can't have with an app or whatever. But I might be missing something.
One of the primary markets for cracked phones is for spying on partners.<p>In the abstract I’m a strong supporter of the idea that you should be able to use and modify a device you own as you see fit…but in the real world “ownership” is a whole lot murkier than the mental model a lot of tech people have.
1. install apps without the app store so we dont ahve to pay 100 bucks yearly for it to apple<p>2. run linux<p>3. run emulators<p>4. run VMs<p>5. install steam<p>6. make it a media server<p>etc
I don't want folding iPhone, I want an iPhone I that turns to desktop once I plug it into USB-C monitor. It has faster CPU and more RAM than Neo.
The only thing I really miss from my jailbreak days is an app that could talk to the cellular baseband and display all cell towers nearby on a map and showed which you were using.<p>I used to have my home screens fully customized but that’s a lot of work creating icons for hundreds of apps. Or even dozens.
I watched the “Can your iPhone do this?” video, assuming that was the coolest one. The others seemed like they’d just be showing the exploit.<p>It seemed like a silly party trick with no practical purpose, and required the terminal to reset things back to normal so the phone was useful again. Why does anyone want this? Surely there are better uses than what was demoed?<p>I used to jailbreak during the first few years of iPhone. I remember being able to drag out from the bottom right corner of the screen to have a launcher, similar to the Dock, but with more stuff. But over time, the iOS got more features and the argument for jailbreaking became less compelling. This is especially true now that so much sensitive information is in our phones… so I trust all this stuff that effectively has root?
Noob q: Does this(and most) hacks like this on the iphone likely rely on some kernel module — or what it talks to for executing code — being compromised to run arbitrary code execution? I dunno about ios but it seems from the videos that something that reads imessage attachments was compromised for privilege escalation.<p>Like what im mean is an attack vector shaped similar to <a href="https://pepsipu.com/blog/2026-10-switch2-jailbreak-ns2jb/" rel="nofollow">https://pepsipu.com/blog/2026-10-switch2-jailbreak-ns2jb/</a> i.e. they compromised `fs` module that did not protect against a buffer attack(in memmov)? My understanding is that most core kernel modules are difficult to attack directly because of XOM, PAC and CFI like protections make it impossible for anyone/thing, so most likely only indirect attacks like above can work in such situations — there is a lot of incentive for teams like apple to do everything possible to improve security so i assume only these kind of difficult to find vectors remain.
hacks like these, where you go from a PDF to full persistence, require a chain of exploits. Pegasus, the iOS malware that made the news awhile ago, used a chain of 3 exploits like this:<p><pre><code> [ Stage 1: Safari/WebKit ] ──> [ Stage 2: KASLR Bypass ] ──> [ Stage 3: Kernel Execution ]
(Memory Corruption/RCE) (Kernel Info Leak) (UAF Privilege Escalation)</code></pre>
John Ternus is the most unlucky person ever, I almost feel bad for what tech execs are gonna have to deal with for the next like 2 years (before software doesn’t mean anything and hardware is priced out for consumers).
A reminder for people who don't follow this, Calif is Thai Duong's firm. Thai discovered the BEAST and CRIME TLS attacks (with Juliano Rizzo), and then worked at Google for a bunch of years, including on Wycheproof with Daniel Bleichenbacher. The team at Calif includes lcamtuf, Dion Blazakis, Tavis Ormandy, and Stefan Esser (among many others).<p>They're basically the most interesting team working in vulnerability research right now; a cross product of ludicrous talent and full-tilt AI work.<p>Just before I left Fly.io a few months ago, we retained Calif for an annual pentest (we'd previously worked with Tetrel, Atredis, Doyen, and I think Include?). They were spooky good. Everybody we'd worked with was good, but Calif's results were unusually high-impact.<p>I love these people and everything they're doing.
Hoping more "unsupported" older "iDevices" can be made usable with newer software with something like "jailbreaking"
It's a felony to subvert the natural order of disposable tech consumerism.
Yeah I have a perfectly fine iPad air and pro that are completely unusable. Nothing installs and nothing supports whats installed.
Israeli spyware vendors thank you for your contribution.
Anything you can find with an LLM to break into a locked device/ecosystem, the operators of that ecosystem can find with an LLM too, and fix it. Right?
Only if it's in updateable software. Hardware takes longer to correct.<p>Hence Sam Altman's latest public comment: "I don't even know a dramatic enough word to use… models can find bugs that are outside of the normal threat model of what we think a hacker can do… hardware-level, insane stuff… I no longer think we're gonna be able to just patch all the bugs."
This is true for things other than LLMs. Outside contributors have been credited with hundreds of security fixes to macOS and iOS that were found with fuzzers and sanitizers. Just off the top of my head CVE-2019-8605. Clearly, Apple has access to AddressSanitizer and libfuzzer, but outsiders still find these things. Not only Apple: Google can find flaws in iOS but outsiders also find flaws in Chrome, so the phenomenon is widespread.
I just feel a bit sad and impotent that a number of security researchers outside the circle cannot join their "yo we found more crazy bugs" party because simply frontier labs only give access to those models with "Red Team" availability to the inner circle members/companies.<p>Now their "trusted cyber access" program is moat rather than safeguard.
You can do a lot with the Chinese open source models.
Not in my experience (yes, sample ~= 1), where they are subpar in terms of cybersecurity (e.g. source code review). This is one of my reports using GPT 5.6 (High), GLM 5.3 High, Fable 5.1 [1]:<p>> On the full benchmark of 31 audited revisions, GPT-5.6 Sol High reached a weighted recall of 38.27% and GLM-5.3 High reached 30.86%. On a common subset of 12 projects, Claude Fable 5.1 High reached 65.70%, against 42.98% for GPT and 35.54% for GLM.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/CoinFabrik/soroban-audit-harness/blob/main/docs/Scout%20AI%202026-Q2.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/CoinFabrik/soroban-audit-harness/blob/mai...</a>
That assumes you have the hardware capable of running inference on them at a reasonable speed
Huh? I requested access to Anthropic’s program saying I was working in AI qa in my day job and wanted in so Claude stopped pooping its pants in the middle of hacking conversations. Took a couple of days and I was in. Mythos access arrived a lot later though.
Same guys who found the PHP.<p>Edit: hahaha you guys are funny. “The php hack” is what I meant!
They found the PHP?
Yes, actually PHP was not invented but discovered in nature. That’s why it’s a bit wild sometimes, because it still remembers its origins.
PHP was born as a templating language, but mutated into a programming language, and then grew organically from there.
Craziest part is it was never even intended to be a programming language. From the Wikipedia page, the founder Rasmus Lerdorf is quoted as saying:<p>"I don't know how to stop it [...] there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language [...] I just kept adding the next logical step on the way."<p>And 23 years later here we are with php2shell and it powering 70% of the internet’s websites
But that only raises the question: what bore PHP? A bit of a C(hicken) and an egg situation.
I mean there's no way there was any intelligent design behind it<p>/ducks and runs
Didn't know that the PHP was lost, thanks for pointing that out.
They found the PHP vulnerability that has upended the world, or so it seems.
The Princely Hippopotamus Parlor in this case.
Cool to see our work here. I'm Thai, and I run Calif. Happy to answer any questions.<p>We'll publish the technical details of these hacks over the coming weeks. Writing these articles takes time, and we've been busy with a PHP thing [1].<p>In the meantime, check out The Great Glyph Grift [2] for a glimpse of what can go wrong when iOS parses PDFs.<p>Just in case you wonder, we've disclosed most of the bugs in these exploit chains to Apple and will disclose the rest. So far in 2026, we've reported close to 100 bugs to Apple. We don't accept Apple bounties, and we're not being paid for this work. We don't sell bugs or exploits, and we have no sponsors funding this research.<p>We do this because it's fun, intellectually challenging, and we want to help make the iPhone safer. We also have a business to run, so we do need some marketing points.<p>[1] <a href="https://calif.io/php2shell" rel="nofollow">https://calif.io/php2shell</a><p>[2] <a href="https://calif.io/research/the-great-glyph-grift" rel="nofollow">https://calif.io/research/the-great-glyph-grift</a>
Why not accept the Apple bounties and donate it or something?
Hey Thai- How much of the at Calif is managing agents to explore ideas? Are ideas coming from agents themselves or still human generated, and has that changed since y'all started the company?<p>On the cost side- How expensive is it to develop each of these demos w.r.t. inference cost? Are y'all purely using OAI/A\ cyber models or are there OSS models being used too?<p>Big fan!
I saw your keynote at BSides a few weeks ago and it blew my mind and it looks like it was just the beginning!
the PDF thing isn't exploited the israeli hacking group a lot ?<p>hell wasn't it what caused that Saudi journalist to get killed in the Saudi embasssy cz Israeli's sold the software to Saudis ?
It’s a pity we gave in to the “ecosystem” play by these huge companies.. even if I jailbreak my iOS and never let it update.. Apple can easily detect the jailbreak and lock me out of anything iCloud, and iMessage and such. iPhone would be one glorious iPod touch after that.. :-(<p>Seeing all these gives me the same energy of early days of jailbroken Android phones where one could become root and do whatever with the hardware…
I stopped considering such tinkering because I got tired of finding those little tweaks and fixes on forums like xda every time something was updated. With the LLMs capable of automating that tool, I might find those old school way of mobile phones again…
Vote with your wallet. Fuck them.<p>You shouldn’t have to use LLMs to run your software.<p>Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.
> Vote with your wallet.<p>Apple is too big for that. Hard regulation is the only way out right now. Maybe breaking them up too.
> Apple is too big for that. Hard regulation is the only way out<p>Apple is <i>not</i> 'too big' for savvy customers to choose differently but all the Mag 7 tech companies <i>are</i> too big for regulation to be a 'way out'. They now all have 'Regulatory Compliance' divisions which are about compliance as much as the 'Ministry of Truth' is about truth. Instead they are filled with highly-paid former regulators, lobbyists and lawyers who use their inside knowledge to avoid, skirt or nullify regulatory impact.<p>Company strategies are now purposely designed at conception to be almost impossibly difficult to prosecute or enforce. It's been working so well over the last decade that when the size of the prize is big enough, mega-tech corps are increasingly willing to just overtly violate regulations knowing they can fight in court for years until the govt settles for a reduced fine that's less than the profit already made.
> Apple is not 'too big' for savvy customers to choose differently<p>Except that won't matter. The "savvy" user is such a tiny minority and only an even tinier minority will be willing to coordinate a boycott. Its a drop in the bucket even if you do get a boycott going.
There are other words for "savvy user":<p>- early adopter<p>- trend setter<p>- tastemaker<p>- that one family member who understands tech so everyone else in the family goes to them for tech advice<p>In other words, yes "savvy" users are a minority ... but they <i>influence</i> many more users.
Good luck trying to get YouTubers to stop making endless content about these products, and, most importantly, good luck getting YouTuber fans to stop demanding this type of content.<p>Connecting the world via the web was always gonna result in unbreakable monopolies. We screwed ourselves and, honestly, there’s no way back now.
I agree boycotting Apple will never matter. My main point was that calling for "regulation" is a cop-out because it no longer stops Mag7 mega-corp abusers.<p>I also pushed back on claiming Apple is "too big" because it's another cop-out those neck-deep in the Apple plantation parrot as if it somehow makes it <i>slightly</i> more okay they're enabling the <i>worst</i> of the Mag7 rapacious abusers. Buy Apple if you want, it won't matter. Just own your choices and spare us the fig-leaf rationalizations.
No, it is an acknowledgement of reality, and a plea not to pretend to be doing something when you're not. Apple is horrible, but are no worse than Google. Better in my opinion, because they never pretended to value freedom, and have a sense of ownership over their customers that is sometimes protective. Also, the phones are simply useful longer.<p>> My main point was that regulation is no longer a reliable check on Mag7 mega-corp abuses.<p>It is a bad point that was not made at all. The fact that corporations are effectively, and often literally currently unregulated is not proof that regulation is not "a reliable check on" abuses any more than my not wearing an oven mitt and constantly being burned is proof that wearing an oven mitt is not reliable protection against being burned.<p>Apple <i>is</i> too big to choose differently. There are two choices. Both are horrible. Eventually you will need to make a choice between one or the other to participate in banking, paying your utilities, buying things in stores, logging onto any internet site, maybe paying tolls, maybe even driving (your license might be issued to your phone.) To some extent, some of these things are true <i>now.</i><p>Why would anybody owe you a "fig-leaf" excuse? Nobody is trying to placate you. They're just telling you what they think and why they are doing what they're doing, you should be grateful.<p>I'm speaking as someone who uses Debian on everything, who went from N900 to Firefox's phone to a $20 Android stuck on 8 that I've never hooked to the Google Play store because I don't have (and have never had) a "Google Account," only F-Droid - a phone that I refuse to browse the internet on or connect to my email (I don't have <i>any</i> social media except HN.) It is nothing to brag about, it is stubbornness. It does not move the needle in any way, and I would not have to make an excuse for <i>not</i> doing it, especially to you.<p>Anyway, I don't use coreboot, don't have a Linux phone anymore, and accept binary blobs in some of my packages, so am I really doing anything?<p>There's nothing more annoying than this purist faux-radical attitude I hear from people so much dirtier than I am. Are you sure you're not using Apple just so you can lecture people who do? Is that the real sin that Android is committing by closing up and becoming indistinguishable from Apple on policy?<p>Nobody will cry for a second about you not using Apple or Android except for you. The <i>only</i> way to stop this is through regulation.
It will matter for yourself and for the companies that support user freedom. Sent from my Librem 5.
It doesn’t actually matter, because your phone is only working as a coincidence. Every website and app is tested for Google phones and iPhones. If you lose the ability to do something one day, the chances of you getting that functionality back without major effort from your phone manufacturer or the kindness of bored people working for free, is essentially zero.
Right up until you send someone with an iPhone a text message or email someone with a Gmail account...
"[S]avvy customers" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. No consumer products technology company gets to be that large off the backs of savvy customers.
Yes they are because the alternatives are worse.
I think that it is necessary a radical political change in the US, akin to a revolution, to be able to pass and enforce meaningful regulation against big tech companies. It's the same as going against the military-industrial complex or big finance. They integrated themselves to this power structure that guarantees their interests come first not only in internal policy, but also in foreign policy. Big tech is a limb of the US empire.
No it's not. You can vote with your wallet right now. Nothing is stopping you.
I'm blind. Apple has explicitly said they wouldn't consider the "bloody ROI" of accessibility (will fund it no matter what). This is important to me. Software freedom is also important to me. What am I to do?
> What am I to do?<p>Pick your priorities. There will never exist enough products to check all of the boxes that all of the people say is important to them. There is someone out there who would much rather have a product cost some amount less at the cost of accessibility features but they think a device that 'just works' is important so they buy the iPhone anyway.
Perhaps what allows Apple is to be better at certain things like that or security for average consumer is indeed at odds with some aspirations? At least in practice, not utopian dreams, that seems to be the case.<p>So you vote with your wallet for accessibility despite freedom and the rest of hacker news do the opposite and it all works itself out.
> What am I to do?<p>Support NGOs fighting for your freedom like <a href="https://eff.org" rel="nofollow">https://eff.org</a>.
Choose an alternative. Plenty of non-Apple phones out there.<p>I stopped buying Apple phones years ago.
You grab an Android phone anyways because Android accessibility is very much on par or even better than whatever slop Apple is putting out with VoiceOver these days, and developers also somewhat care about it more on Android.<p>You're also going to benefit from European mandates to have accessible mobile apps anyways, it's coming for free to you.
Nope - iPhone accessibility is much better than any alternative.
> <i>You're also going to benefit from European mandates to have accessible mobile apps anyways, it's coming for free to you.</i><p>Not true, the EU tried to become a regulatory superpower and largely failed to export its rules to the rest of the world. Instead, Apple and Google just aren't bringing new features to the EU anymore.
What features are missing in the EU, though?
If you know of any company that would bother to spend days making accessibility improvements, yet for some reason decide to not bring those to the US release, they're the dumbest fucking company in existence.<p>The EU accessibility mandates will be followed by apps, not by platforms. I don't care if Apple Music wants to keep being trash, Spotify, Deezer and Tidal will improve and lift everyone with it.
What if I want to vote against both Apple and Google but still be able to do my banking business?
What banking business? Use a web browser, or just bank in person like everyone did not long ago. Carry a credit card instead of Apple/Google Pay. That's what degoogled Android users do and it's a very minor inconvenience anyone with a little bit of maturity should be able to accept. Also, cash is much better for your privacy.
And if you require a one-time SMS code for purchase (which can be adjusted via their website, most likely), then you still have an option that is not Apple and Google. I use a dumbphone for "banking" (SMS)... and a credit card, and the website. Those are really all the 3 things I need to do banking, as you have said so correctly.
It’s not possible. Logging in to a banking website is becoming strictly speaking impossible w/o a phone.
Choose a different bank, then. I've gradually stopped using the phone apps, not really by design but just because I don't often feel like that works better than the real web site. Both USAA and my local credit union have perfectly good desktop web sites.
Yes you want a phone for SMS to log on to the web site. But I avoid banking apps on a phone. Dont need them.
I've never really experienced that. Which banks?
Belfius for example of you have ever used itsme with them. Also Digi (a mobile phone company in Belgium) since it uses itsme for authentication. Itsme is strictly an Android and iOS app.
More info on this is going to come out, but banks are going through <i>hell</i> right now with AI agents accessing user accounts and even firing off transfers and other accounts activity, and their legal teams are losing their minds.<p>So a bank shutting down a website right now and the "forcing" some Google/Apple "verification" makes a lot of sense in that context.
I never do Banking on my phone and never had an issue.
The country I live in (VN) recently banned online banking without using a mobile app and biometric verification via selfie. The sites had to withdraw access.
Or instead of hamstringing your entire way of life and making things immeasurably harder.. we could regulate them too.
You can bank without Apple iOS/macOS or Google Android/Chrome.<p>You can also vote with your wallet regarding banking. Put your deposits in another bank.
When one party has a trillion votes and you have like 1000 or so, that is not voting. That is just exiling yourself.<p>Edit: exiling not exhaling
If an entity has a product that has a trillion people choosing it, the marginal benefit to society to build an entirely new product for 1000 people or so isn't worth it. The people whose time would be required to produce that second product for a very, very small 1,000 person market would better serve society by working on other goals.<p>Nor should those 1,000 people get to try to use the government to tell the other trillion what product they should have to buy.
But if the 1000 are persuading others with meaningful benefits and gaon momentum it's a different story.
Select your bank(s) accordingly.
Use a laptop
Why should your bank trust you?
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Yes, I can vote with my wallet, but no, it doesn't make a difference. I've been voting with my wallet since day 1 by never buying an iPhone because of how closed it is, and unsurprisingly, this has done absolutely nothing to change how open the iPhone is.
Voting with your wallet doesn’t mean you get to take away from others. It means choosing companies you want to support.
You and I have very different definitions of "take away".<p>I also think you might benefit from rereading the context here; someone said that government regulation is needed to make the iPhone ecosystem open, and someone else disagreed on the basis that voting with one's wallet is a viable alternative. I disagreed with that disagreement, arguing that voting with one's wallet doesn't produce the change that the original commenter said regulation was needed for; telling me "that's not what voting with your wallet does" is redundant, because that's literally what I was already saying. You're certainly entitled to disagree with my opinion that making the ecosystem more open is a desirable goal, but that's not a premise I introduced here, so if disagreeing with that is your intention, it's unclear to me why you picked out my comment as the one to express that when the original statement of that goal was several parent comments up from mine.
It's not redundant and he isn't disagreeing with your opinion about openness. He's saying that it's immoral to want to force your personal preferences about phone design on other people.<p>Buying a phone you like? Moral.<p>Trying to force every phone to be one you like? Immoral.<p>That's all it's about. Not a difference in definitions or confusing on his part, he's just saying you've got morality all wrong and need to reconsider your position.
Again, my comment that he responded to literally was just making a claim that the iPhone ecosystem is not going to become more open due to voting with one's wallet. Yes, I obviously also think it should be more open, and that's an opinion that someone can strongly disagree with, but that's not what I was saying in the comment he responded to, because whether an action is moral or not is irrelevant to the question of whether it would produce a certain effect.<p>My point in the comment you responded to is that if person A says "we need to eat more vegetables to be healthy", person B says "no, you will be healthy if you only eat meat", and person C says "I tried only eating meat and I was unhealthy, so I think that's evidence that meat alone might not make you healthy", it's a non-sequitur to respond to person C by saying "it's immoral for you to say someone else should eat vegetables". If you responded to person A saying that, it wouldn't be as weird, but to remain silent when person A and B are debating the health effects of vegetables but then suddenly take issue with person C trying to provide evidence about whether the claims for A and B are correct or when they didn't introduce the topic that you have moral opinions on is very weird.
That is like saying prosecuting murder is immoral because it is taking away the murderer and victims rights.<p>For a society to function there needs to be balance. ‘You can do whatever you want as long as enough people pay you to cover your bills’ gets bleak fast.
It's not like that because nothing to do with iPhone security is comparable to murder.<p>There's a whole set of philosophies on this topic, for example the non-aggression principle. You can't just make an arbitrary comparison and then use it to argue for your position.
Many people benefit from Apple's closed system. Especially when you look at the malware and viruses that don't exist, because it's so protected.<p>It's a net benefit for society, even if you don't personally like it.
> Especially when you look at the malware and viruses that don't exist, because it's so protected.<p>There are fewer viruses on Linux than on Windows, despite being far more open. I imagine your response will be that there are a lot more iPhone users than Linux ones, but my point is that there are a lot more factors than treating "open or closed" as a binary, and at best you can make a principled hypothesis about why something doesn't exist. For all you know, maybe making it more open would allow security researchers to find and report more potential attack vectors; extra attention from being more widely used cuts both ways.
I think you have entirely the wrong comment chain and poster in mind with your response.
It turns out 99.9999% of iPhone users don’t want what HN wants.<p>They want what Apple sells.
If you did that then you probably made clear your reasons which probably created mindshare with others which probably has helped the EU open up the iPhone. Don’t be so defeatist because the outcome isn’t immediately apparent.
I'm not being defeatist; I'm pretty much arguing for what you're saying, which is that I think government intervention is needed. The parent comment I was responding to said that regulation isn't needed because voting with our wallets is sufficient, and I was disagreeing.
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vote with your wallet here is to make a new phone company that uses only these user owned devices.<p>its not particularly feasible to do for the end customer, similar to trying to buy EVs in the US when the upstream dealer decides whata available for you.<p>vote with your wallet is for the ultra-wealthy.<p>the rest of us can vote with our votes instead, and get much better results
> the rest of us can vote with our votes instead, and get much better results<p>Not sure where you live or what votes you are making, but "much better results" is hardly what I've seen or expect from US politics, politicians, and the uber wealthy that run the corporations that dominate many of the most important aspects of our daily lives.
Target has been losing a lot of money with people deciding to ship elsewhere, it wiry, it just takes a lot of people to get together and do it
> similar to trying to buy EVs in the US<p>You're kidding right? It seems like every other car around here is a Tesla or some other EV. It's mostly Teslas and trucks really.
Yeah, I don't understand the parent comment, buying EV's in the US is even easier than ICE vehicles in most states. Now if they are talking about BYD being blocked in the US, so access to extremely cheap EVs, much of Europe is doing the same thing.
But the alternative is another monopolistic tech giant. There is no viable third platform. So I agree with OP, the answer is breaking them up.
Pixel phones have an unlocked bootloader. One can load GrapheneOS onto those phones without needing to jailbreak them.<p>Even without flashing a new OS, one can install third party app stores (e.g. F-Droid) with open source apps and/or side-load modified versions of those apps.
> There is no viable third platform.<p>There is no "viable third platform" because people don't vote against the two existing ones with their wallets.<p>Can you name an example where a government succeeded in breaking up a monopoly, and the result was better for consumers? AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft were all "broken up", but it didn't make a difference for consumers. In every case, a competitor forced them to change their ways.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem</a>
It'd be about as effective as voting blue/red in a solidly red/blue state. All you're doing is signaling about yourself.
I voted with my wallet and apple is still an untouchable giant conglomerate that does whatever it wants, what now chief?
Wake up. These mega corporations are too big to care now. Most people are uninformed or unaffected. America has been brainwashed into a FU I got mine mindset.<p>The tiny fraction of people willing to vote with their wallet has effectively a 0% chance of pushing big corporate to act right.
I think Corey Doctorow has the best retort to this. They want you to vote with your wallet because they have thicker wallets than you.<p>No. Regulation is the answer. Hopefully everything changes in November. That’s when GTA VI comes out.
Serious question: What alternative phones do you suggest? I've tried PinePhone and PinePhone Pro and it was painful.
Painful is the price you can choose to pay. Everyone has different priorities.
Since part of what I'm purposely purchasing from Google or Apple is a more secure by default system I'm probably the wrong person to ask. My wallet vote is effectively for something different than yours.
Google Pixel + GrapheneOS
True. But so long as only 1% of people care enough to do this, and they can make >1% more profit per customer with their crap - then it's more profitable for them to continue the crap.
Many things are stopping you. I see this response all the time as a counter to inappropriate behavior by monopolistic giant entities.<p>It's the wrong way of thinking about the problem. The whole point is that they've gained too much market power for any individual to be able to stop them meaningfully, and that collective action using the power of government is the only way.<p>Any argument that tries to talk people out of that is on the same side as the tech oligarchs, in my opinion.
I don't personally want them to stop. I like what they produce and how they produce it. As long as there are enough people like me there will be a market for this.
Voting with your wallet doesn’t mean stopping them. That isn’t what it is about. You shouldn’t get to choose to stop them because you don’t like their actions any more than I should be able to choose banning you from carriers because I don’t like your choices.
Yes, some of us simply don't give a damn. I'll continue buying Apple products because they work and I don't have to do much of anything to keep them working. Just because I like tinkering or customizing other computers/devices, doesn't mean I want to be a sysadmin to my phone lol
> You shouldn’t get to choose to stop them because you don’t like their actions<p>Of course we should, at a society level. This basic concept is called public policy.
> Apple is too big for that.<p>I think you're wrong, but even if you're right, why wouldn't you vote with your wallet anyway?<p>You alone might not hurt Apple much, but it could certainly help whatever upstart competitor you choose to support.
I have not purchased any Apple or Google products in a decade. Straight up ignoring them is a perfectly viable call in the modern world.
It's not only about driving Apple out of business. If you don't use Apple, you simply don't have to deal with any Apple bullshit. All your Apple-related worries just disappear. And you even have enough money left over to afford a separate non-rooted phone for your bank (in the unlikely event you need one).
I’ll vote with my vote thank you. My table’s manufacturer shouldn’t get a say in what I put on my table, and Apple shouldn’t get a say about my phone either.<p>These clearly anti-consumer practices should just be illegal.
Which country does this vote happen in?<p>Last I heard even EU policy was ways off of that target.<p>Also: EU policy is very shcceptible to political tides. Sure now we love to scream sovereignty from the rooftops but that is guaranteed to change eventually.
> Apple shouldn’t get a say about my phone either.<p>They operate the factories manufacturing the phones. They have total say about their phones, and you have no say. Your almighty powers within the Linux terminal doesn't extend beyond it.
I'll vote with my vote as well, and my vote will not be for candidates who equate computers with tables. Hacking isn't a human right. Go buy a different phone if you don't like Apple's phones. There are a bunch to choose from.
Idk what point you think you're making, but human rights aren't an absolute law of nature, it's something we decide on.<p>> Hacking isn't a human right.<p>Hacking is such a loaded term for "the right to use the thing I purchased how I see fit".<p>> Go buy a different phone if you don't like Apple's phones. There are a bunch to choose from.<p>This is beside the point (and may not always be true). The ability for the manufacturer of a thing I bought and ostensibly own to tell me how to use my property.<p>It's really not that hard to understand. The fact that it's a computer doesn't change anything.
I agree with you except that "Hacking isn't a human right" part
This comment made me think that someone should pull an ArtCraft on Android or iOS by making a good linux phone skin, with high performance auto-updating wrappers for various web apps to make them as convenient as mobile native ones. Then we can actually ditch the big corps and bask in our LLM-enabled open source utopia. Hmmmmm.
<i>Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive</i><p>I don't expect that to happen, but I do expect Apple et al to spend trillions of tokens hardening their platforms against users and red-teaming to find these sorts of holes before release.
> Vote with your wallet<p>The loss of your purchase is insignificant compared to the money Apple and Google make from their walled gardens.<p>Plus what other viable options are there in this duopoly?<p>Apparently there’s a popular 3rd option in Asia but is there any support for western apps? And how are you going to convince a million other people to switch?
Many Android phones are not unlockable without hacking. They use cryptography to protect the bootloader and to get the unlock code for your own phone first you need to provide them all your information.
Where would you point said wallet? Google isn't far behind Apple on this from, ahead in some ways, and many (all?) of the FOSS Linux powered phones cost even more than iPhones do.
> and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.<p>Running local models is getting -cheaper- every month in spite of rising hardware costs due to intelligence compression innovations like Bonsai2.<p>I build operating systems for a living using only consumer GPUs at home.
<i>> Vote with your wallet</i><p>If that would work, I'd be writing this on my iPhone Mini.
It did work. You're just a very small minority of users, as are most people here.
What is your current phone?
>Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.<p>The local inference threshold has been crossed already. Its possible to achieve big model like performance through agent harnesses with local models.
There are already open weight models that are quite capable and can use any provider.
> Vote with your wallet. Fuck them.<p>Easier said than done. Because, "Apple can do no wrong" is the general public perception. Look at any wrongdoing by Apple - whether they were caught slowing down the phones, degrading cameras on purpose or even the lawsuit where they were caught spying on people's voice recordings. There will always be some NPC defending them as if the billion dollar corporation gives a shit about them.<p>That or "Apple is the only pro-privacy company in the world" despite there being an active lawsuit against them for the exact opposite.<p>So, I say: Vote with your wallet. Fuck them...and the fanboys.
Buy Jolla phone
> <i>Vote with your wallet.</i><p>But what are the options?
This. The only mainstream alternative is Android, and I'm already "voting with my wallet" against Samsung, Google, and the rest for violating user privacy even more than Apple does.
And while you're at it, make real change happen in the US national elections by voting for a third party! That'll show them!
How are running local ones going to become cost prohibitive? Indications are that Nvidia has been channel stuffing (artificially inflating perceived demand), which suggests massive oversupply of GPUs.
> <i>Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.</i><p>If Murican lobbying/corruption tries to snuff AI that threatens the Hutt cartels, China will accelerate it.
> <i>even if I jailbreak my iOS and never let it update.. Apple can easily detect the jailbreak and lock me out of anything iCloud, and iMessage and such.</i><p>As someone who's been jailbreaking since the iPhone 3GS (and held onto a iOS 17.0 device for the longest time), Apple has never bothered to detect jailbreaks and lock people out of iCloud and iMessage.<p>If anything, it's those sleazy security framework providers that provide jailbreak detection to apps and cause them to either lock people out of accounts and features, or crash entirely.<p>Some government-mandated audit processes (at least, that's what I understand here in Singapore) also require jailbreak detection.
> Apple has never bothered to detect jailbreaks and lock people out of iCloud and iMessage.<p>Not entirely true. It absolutely has in the case of the Hackintosh. In fact many a year ago that’s what inspired me to get my first Mac, because every release of macOS made it harder and harder with custom bootloader and kexts to get around Apple’s active efforts to ensure you couldn’t use those unless you were on an actual Apple device, not just running their OS.
A Hackintosh is different from an iOS jailbreak.<p>An iOS jailbreak is trying to use an Apple device like a Linux device, with access to the filesystem and private APIs.<p>A Hackintosh is more like emulating the APIs (and an actual Apple serial number, which I guess they use to gate access to iCloud and iMessage) required to boot and run macOS on an Intel PC.
No, I get it, but it's still somewhat fallacious to say Apple doesn't care about "unauthorized" access to devices or services (whether or not you agree that such authority is reasonable or not).
> I stopped considering such tinkering because I got tired of finding those little tweaks and fixes on forums like xda every time something was updated.<p>Several vendors sell Android devices that allow bootloader unlocking, Pixels being the most known.<p>Once unlocked, Magisk is the current and most used rooting tool.<p>The procedure is quite straightforward.<p><a href="https://github.com/topjohnwu/magisk" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/topjohnwu/magisk</a><p><a href="https://magiskmanager.com/" rel="nofollow">https://magiskmanager.com/</a>
That's why my next phone will be an unlocked Android device (Shiftphone 8), but murena[0] has also other nice devices that are unlocked.<p>[0]<a href="https://murena.com/products/smartphones/" rel="nofollow">https://murena.com/products/smartphones/</a>
> Apple can easily detect the jailbreak and lock me out<p>Does this actually happen? They did not do that in the good old days.<p>I do know that some apps try to detect jailbreaks and annoyingly refuse to let people log in. Banking and such.
Oh man, those early days of XDA forums and SenseUI roms on my NexusOne. Those were truly a thing of beauty. We still haven't gotten back to that level. I'm with you though, I stopped playing and moved to a stock device. Then I moved back to an iPhone and have been completely stock ever since. I haven't been excited about an iPhone since the 10 released. After that I think, "oh cool, another rectangle". "A grid of icons"... "The best camera Apple's ever put in a phone.... how wonderful".
I remember a long while ago when you could jailbreak iOS with a corrupted font in a pdf.<p>There was a website jailbreakme you simple slid a slider and you were done.<p>From Wikipedia<p>August 1, 2010, exploited a vulnerability in the FreeType library used while rendering PDF files.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JailbreakMe" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JailbreakMe</a>
There have been several companies that tried to sell open mobile devices over the years, but people have shown time and time again that they don't want to buy that product. We can wish it were different all we like, but in general we aren't entitled to money-losing, unmarketable products.
> Apple can easily detect the jailbreak and lock me out of anything iCloud, and iMessage and such.<p>Don't sign into any of Apple services then! Just use it as a pure developer playground or create an alternate ID. Can't be looking for everything everywhere :-)
Such antiuser behavior from Apple or others should be illegal.
<p><pre><code> > we gave in to the “ecosystem”
</code></pre>
No you do not. Go buy a Fairphone
Can't anyone customize the source of grapheneOS and simultaneously get a phone that is not trying to disable itself?
> even if I jailbreak my iOS and never let it update.<p>Two things:<p>a) Why the would you never want to update an OS in this day and age ?<p>b) I understand the perspective of people insisting on wanting to be able to root their phone. But how about we take a step back and look at the reality of the 2026 security environment ? An environment where you have:<p><pre><code> - Increasing volumes of increasingly sneaky security exploits on one side
- A phone with your 2FA apps, your banking apps, your email apps, your kids photos on the other
</code></pre>
Frankly. I want Apple to lock down my iPhone as much as possible in that context.<p>If I want to be root, I can do so on my desktop or a cloud VM or whatever.<p>But making root on a phone easy just seems like a recipe for disaster... if its easy for you, its easy for the bad guys too.
> a) Why the would you never want to update an OS in this day and age ?<p>Because updates break the jailbreak. If Apple actually had a sanctioned way to let you do what you want with the device you bought there would indeed be very little reason to not update.
Maybe your phone doesn't have banking and stuff on it
> Maybe your phone doesn't have banking and stuff on it<p>I don't know where you live, but where I am most banks insist on proprietary 2FA via their own app. Only (some of) the fintechs allow TOTP.<p>Yes you can get your codes via SMS, but I thnk we all know what a security mess SMS is. I would rather have the bank's proprietary app since at least everything will be going over HTTPS and also eliminates most of the vulnerabilities associated with SMS just by virtue of being an app.
Passkeys are the standardized version of the bank's proprietary app. Well, except for the device attestation part, that won't happen on iPhones.
USA, Chase lets me set a passkey
If your phone does not have any important or sensitive on it, why even secure it?
If I'm happy with how it's working, an update can only break things.
Am I the only person/iPhone user that hasn’t given in to the iCloud ecosystem?
I’ve never used iCloud. I hate Apple but I hate Google more. Instead of iCloud I use WebDav, CalDav, Bitwarden and NextCloud. Contacts, calendar, passwords and photos that I control. I recommend the same to others but I can count on one hand who has actually gone away from iCloud into such a setup.
We gave in because open source and hobbiests do not design good products and even worse shared systems, as much as they enjoy self-righteously declaring their values. And shared systems require trust, planning, and goal setting in a way no open system would ever build.<p>1) They of course lack the resources<p>2) Often lack professional displince across all skills required<p>3) Mostly make for themslves or whats interesting, not whats needed.<p>4) The release schedule is laughable at best.
This seems more correlated with big vs. small organizations, not closed vs. open organizations. There are open projects (e.g., Debian, Blender) that tick all four of your boxes in my opinion.
> open source and hobbiests do not design good products<p>This is opinion. In my opinion, closed products are not good products. To me, openness and freedom trump subjectively better UX any day.<p>> as much as they enjoy self-righteously declaring their values.<p>Consider that in our society and software ecosystem, this is all but required to stave off the forces that would enclose the software commons that these "self-righteous" volunteers work so hard to maintain.
this must be nailed to the wall somewhere at autodesk
linux?
... is an example in support of GP's point.<p>Great for professionally administered servers or expert power users. Not for much else. Until recently, esoteric use-cases like <i>playing audio</i> were catastrophically unsolved. And then those got better around when screen sharing, accessibility devices, and remote-assistance tools all broke because of another OSS schism. Installing and running an ordinary program requires choosing among a handful of ways of doing that (container systems, package managers) even on the same distro. And then if a graphical program wants to do crazy stuff like "open a file", well, the permissioning situation is "fragmented" to put it generously.<p>Gaming? Gaming works great on Linux now! ...because a corporation with centralized planning, KPIs, and incentives spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it.<p>I like Linux. It's been my daily driver for years, on and off. I use it for a living, I use it for a hobby. But that doesn't mean it's not a perfect example of every single one of the OSS flaws that GP listed.
You do understand the reasons right? iCloud, iMessages etc are an interplay of software in your device, software in cloud and some networking. They have to work together. A jailbroken phone can have a tinkered iMessage app. Supporting tinkered / unsupported versions is more overhead / possible security risk. Why would you expect them to take on that?
I agree with your point, though I can easily modify ~/Library/Messages/Attachments or ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.MobileSMS/Data on macOS, which is a platform similarly secure to an iPhone when you take sandboxing, sip, etc. into account. So Apple already supports macOS, which can be tinkered, no? I guess the argument is that by locking down iOS, a platform which was never open, they just never needed to handle that class of security risks which are introduced when customers have more freedom.<p>I did actually discover a bug in iOS (related to photos which have failed to sync to icloud for the past four years) by investigating why there were over 23k empty folders in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService/Data/tmp/, fwiw.
You're right, but I could see Apple acting on iOS alone, just because of scale.<p>There are some orders of magnitude more iOS/iPadOS devices than macOS devices.<p>There's a bunch of ways we could debate ourselves about things Apple would or wouldn't do, but at the end of the day, Apple is going to do whatever is in it's best interest.
My computer is jailbroken, I have sip disabled yet icloud and imessage work. So what makes my computer different from my phone?
Who bears the security risk? The user.<p>The only security risk for apple is a job security risk if the ecosystem lock-in is eroded.
Is PDF the new Flash? It just does too much for its own good, it has become a huge attack vector
Video 3 get a root shell agains 27.0.1 which is the latest iOS version installed on my lovely se3.<p>This really blown my mind, and seem the 1/2 video is installed a app by click pdf link?<p>I guess and hope there will be update from apple quickly
Is it an exploit around the library that handles PDF parsing/opening? Can someone explain how files / attachement are open on a mobile device ( android/iPhone).<p>I don't understand how in 2026 this is still a thing, we have many safe languages to parse/deserialize data. Why is it complicated?
PDFs are basically executables, that's why it's hard. They support running code, they support decoding images which themselves have their own custom compressors that are basically code. Anything to do with image formats is rife for bad decoders, insane compression algorithms from the 90s, and a PDF is basically 1000 formats inside many different container types with executable code plastered on everywhere. If you want to make a compatible PDF viewer you'll need to be able to implement an image decoder algorithm for a fax machine that was specific to Japan in the late 80s, which was somehow ratified into a standard and is used today by all the top legal firms, or something absurd like that. When you open a PDF on your computer, depending on how it is being parsed, it can even make outbound network connections without you knowing. To safely open a PDF you need one of those bomb proof suits, a disposable laptop, and even then you might be going home without eyebrows.
Willing to bet that a default "treat PDFs/documents/spreadsheets as dumb" option in operating systems would eliminate the majority of common one-click vulnerabilies out there. And exactly 0.001% of actual use cases would be affected.
This is one of the things iOS's Lockdown Mode does. I wish the features of Lockdown Mode were able to be enabled individually instead of a single all or none option.<p><a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120</a>
Your link doesn’t say anything about PDFs. And if I remember correctly it only disables PDF previews in Messages. This means if you have a zero-click exploit now it becomes a one-click exploit. I fail to see how that’s relevant given the article is already demonstrating a one-click exploit.
I’ve turned on lockdown mode while this CVE insanity is going on. It’s far less disruptive than I expected. The only thing I noticed missing is web gl is disabled.
PDFs are just absurdly complicated in general. Dumbing down the parser might be the right idea. I wonder what consequences that would have with how intertwined PostScript and PDF in general are with macOS/iOS; maybe that's why the PostScript engine was removed with macOS Sonoma/iOS 17? I don't know if that was only user facing behavior and Apple is still working to remove the internal usages.
No. Very few PDF exploits come from the officially sanctioned way of running code (JavaScript) inside PDF. Most are just plain old parser bugs.
That's kind of what Adobe does with downloaded PDFs, you have to click the Enable button to turn on more document features. My schematic capture app will output a PDF that has links that will take you to specific spots on a page and also some JavaScript where you can right click on a part and see it's BOM information. None of that stuff works until you click the Enable button. I've also seen some vendors offer not only normal 3D model files and 2D drawings but a PDF that has an interactive 3D model inside. It's kinda cool how much random shit can go into a PDF but it's clearly a massive malware vector.<p>One neat thing I've seen is a PDF that will ping an IP catcher when opened in Adobe, regardless of the security level. The same can be done with word docs, excel spreadsheets, and even SVGs.
Did we do that with Excel spreadsheets so that macros are disabled by default?
"dumb" isn't a real thing in computer science though. You mean render them to bitmaps in a sandbox?
I read it more as "don't implement JS, 3D object rendering, slideshow transitions, sound annotations and the other 999 insane features that I'm not even aware exist"
I think he just means disable any of the "advanced" features mentioned above like accessing web content, running custom scripts, etc etc. You might still be vulnerable to any dependencies they use for image rendering itself but I bet it would make it drastically more safe.<p>Then just have a button for turning those on as needed on a case by case basis
> PDFs are executables, that's why it's hard.<p>That isn’t really true, it’s not hard for PDF viewers to block by default (or just not implement) the problematic features, which also aren’t critical for the vast majority of PDF files.<p>The exploitable bugs are typically the usual, some buffer overflow in an underlying image or font library or similar, but unrelated to PDFs being “executable”.
> PDFs are executables, that's why it's hard. They support running code<p>I don't think Apple's PDF renderer supports e.g. running JS, you'd need real Acrobat for that. Or are you talking about something else?<p>> they support decoding images which themselves have their own custom compressors that are also basically code themselves.<p>But this is fundamentally true for anything that displays images, right? Or are the PDF formats particularly bad for some reason?
Yeah a lot of those fancy PDF features are Adobe-only. It's not that other apps can't support those features, it's that no one in their right mind wants to spend endless amounts of money and time trying to sandbox it.<p>Most people have some understanding that shady websites can give you malware, a drive-by exploit is pretty rare but it's good that most people think just visiting a site could infect your computer. But a PDF is just a document, right? Just thinking that a PDF is just words on a page is exactly why it's such an insidious threat. Or they'll get a PDF as an email attachment, see that it's not an exe or something weird, and open it because they think a document is safe.
I think it's more the image formats PDF supports? I could be wrong, but there was that forcedentry vulnerability (which was insanely cool, even if really bad)
From the standpoint of a layman it looks like there's a lot of overlap between writing safe web browsers/engines and writing safe PDF readers/engines. There just hasn't been anywhere near as much of an impetus to push PDF readers/engines in that direction because most of us aren't interacting with PDFs nearly as often as we interact with the web (and things built on web tech).
The difference is that web browsers absolutely need to support JavaScript to correctly display many important web sites, whereas that’s not necessary for PDF. You also don’t have to deal with vulnerability footguns like XSS/CSRF/CORS in PDF. Except for some rare special use cases that PDF viewers don’t need to support, nothing has to happen online for PDF. It’s really not comparable.
Most web browsers actually make decent PDF viewers by default don't they ?
I'm pretty sure not even the safe languages would help you here. PDF allows you to pretty much run arbitrary code since it supports javascript, images, and a bunch of other things I'm forgetting, and you can't not implement javascript support or otherwise be selective about what you support with it because then all the end-users will complain when they get that one PDF that they need to fill out but it needs JS because... Nobody knows.
If I were Apple:<p><pre><code> 1) All parsing of hostile input happens in micro VM's
2) Re-write as fast as possible the core in a memory safe language</code></pre>
Oh boy, what a week. Must be great working in cybersec right now.
What are they even offering for a bounty reward these days if you manage to do it?
This gave me warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia. Jailbreaking my iPod touch back in the day was so fun before there was anything serious on these devices.
#4 is very interesting. Truly untethered (persistent) jailbreaks haven't been a thing for 10 years.
This brings back lots of memory of jail-breaking iPhone era and cydia the alternative jailbroken iPhone app store.<p>The second video, the person who's shooting the video has his face mirrored onto the screen, anonymity is gone.
More details: <a href="https://onejailbreak.com/blog/iphone-duo-ios-27-1-jailbreak-window/" rel="nofollow">https://onejailbreak.com/blog/iphone-duo-ios-27-1-jailbreak-...</a>
I'm not sure if this is real, but if it is: this week is unbelievable. I really hope it's not the new normal, but unfortunately I don't believe this myself.
It's a minuscule part of the new normal.
If this continues I'll argue that you have to be absolutely insane to allow network connected electronics into your home in the future. This is Apple, known for locking down their device to the extreme, and yes some people would love to use this for jailbreaking their phones, other organisations want to root your phone for .... other purposes.<p>Insecure webpages, broken certificates and an insecure PDF library... You shouldn't have anything more connected than an FM radio at this point. Security is no longer something a private individual can deal with.
There's every incentive for nation states and other espionage outfits to keep these types of exploits under wraps. This has probably been the new normal for some time ..<p>I for one have experienced multiple lifetimes worth of internet madness and will be looking to airgap / disconnect as many devices as I can get away with.
People have been paying a premium to companies like Apple for a reason. You've got nothing to worry about.<p>Decade of people's purchases has been invested into safety and security. It's absolutely unthinkable that a $7t market cap company with an army of 200k workers will ever leave people high and dry. They proudly went public, so we know they have the public's interests at heart.
> They proudly went public, so we know they have the public's interests at heart.<p>God I hope this is sarcasm.
I assuming there is a /s missing from the end of your post.
I <i>think</i> in time (a few years) the gap will close a bit. As AI is used to harden software, it will be harder to break. Software not validated by AI will continue to be vulnerable to it.
This assumes that it is possible to actually write truly secure code.<p>Even of that were possible in the abstract, it would also have to be secure when running on hardware.
I personally don’t believe that perfect security can exist or that we will reach that ideal of somehow being ahead of the curve.
Patches will get better and faster, so will exploits. The stakes will grow. There will always be a human or budget issue.<p>The only way I see to mitigate the impact is to reduce our reliance on connected systems.
So what happens if AI becomes something that you need to actually pay real money for? Then only Apple, Google and Microsoft can affort to do network exposed software. Smaller companies and solo developers are just f-ed if the price of running LLMs goes up as investor money dries up.
It would make me so happy if this would allow running UTM.app with Hypervisor support on iPadOS. I don't want to travel with two devices, the would be enough, but sometimes I need a real desktop. Apple, of course, wants you to buy two devices. I do have UTM with Jit Linux running on my iPad, via altstore and entitlements and so on, but it is all a bit complex and still fairly slow.
the videos just don't hit the same without the dancing anime girl and the electronic dance music.
My favourite part from the first video is how much effort it took to drag up from the bottom of the screen to get back to the home-screen. This reflects my experience with how iOS handles touch gestures in general.. also super easy to accidentally activate "Reachability" mode!
The reason they're having trouble is because they're in the simulator.<p>Also, if reachability bothers you like it does me, you can disable it.
Seriously I want a physical home button again
You say this, but have you tried an old iPhone recently? I did, and it was actually pretty terrible. The quick little swipes to switch between apps is so much more natural now.
Perhaps if you know how. Watching my dad use his iPhone.. Every time have to teach him something new, and hope he remembers it.<p>So stupid interface. No discoverability.
I recently learned you can swipe on the address bar in Android-Chrome to navigate to the next/previous tab. Also, press+hold on the tab count button to show the tab's options e.g. close tab. Now my address bar is on the bottom of the screen.<p>Terrible discoverability. I guess the genalpha kids know gestures like this, but stuff like this makes me feel like a boomer.
Android Firefox had that swipe gesture for a long time. You tap the tabs count to show all tabs. You can close any of them from there. A long tap opens a menu. New tab, new private tab, close tab.
Safari added this in iOS recently. You can also swipe up on the address bar (after tapping it to make it "big") to swipe between pages, similar to the home screen. Found it on accident.
Whenever I use my wife's iphone I feel like an idiot. I've been working in tech for 20 years
Try going back to thumb typing, no long press symbols , and no cursor movement from your spacebar. I've almost thrown my test iPhone at work across a room more times than I'd like to admit (since it doesn't belong to me)...
Yes, my wife has an iPhone 6, I wish I had that. Though half of that is the jack.
I will keep my SE 3rd gen a looong time for that specific reason
<a href="https://x.com/calif_io/status/2113570095549337977" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/calif_io/status/2113570095549337977</a>
We peaked in the early 00s with warez key generators featuring banger synth tracks.
Don't worry, they got you:<p><a href="https://xxcancel.com/calif_io/status/2113570095549337977" rel="nofollow">https://xxcancel.com/calif_io/status/2113570095549337977</a>
Here you go…
<a href="https://lnkd.in/p/g9_uh79c">https://lnkd.in/p/g9_uh79c</a>
So true.
Just let me know when I can install an alternate OS to my junk drawer of 6-10 year old iPhones. That's the holy grail.
They are going to run out of vulns eventually when the code is rewritten in memory safe lang & the rest are found.
> They are going to run out of vulns eventually when the code is rewritten in a memory safe lang<p>that's just not how it works at all though is it. Good luck writing the kernel, firmware etc in a completely memory-safe way. And even if that was accomplished, memory safety isn't the only class of vulnerabilities, it's just the most common.<p>> and the rest are found<p>If they kept a stable version with no updates or new features *ever*, only security patches, for decades, then maybe that could be possible, yeah. But Apple users aren't exactly the kind of people who would enjoy such stability and security anyways, it comes with the compromise of novelty. Stability and security aren't very fashionable either.<p>edit: Obviously a "memory-safe way" means no `unsafe` blocks in Rust, too.<p>edit#2: This is all assuming we don't get true AGI. I hope my assumption is right
Crazy, you would think Apple would have already done AI-assisted vulnerability scans using the latest and most expensive models.<p>Absolutely crazy how PDF parsing and image rendering are still exploitable.
I want to boot linux in a vm at full-speed. is that too much to ask?
Aside from bragging how cool they are, what value is there for demonstrating a yet-to-be-patched vulnerability? I don't understand why old-guard infosec stars from Calif can do as they want, responsible disclosure be damned.<p>Just as a reminder for some folks here: During their WeWorm research in July–September 2026, Calif didn't stop at proving RCE to Tencent—they spent an extra week using AI to build a fully functional, self-propagating zero-click worm across three live phones, triggering temporary account bans from Tencent during testing.
I don't see this as irresponsible disclosure. They show that the vulns exist, but don't give any other details (unlike previous Calif releases). Not even a hint at what the exploit chain is like other than that it starts with a PDF, which is a surprise to no one.<p>They're of course also doing it for internet kudos, but attracting attention like this will help encourage people to update. Thanks to this article, I'm going to apply the next iOS security update ASAP, and tell everyone I know to do this the same. (hopefully it comes out soon)<p>I do wish they clearly stated the vulns have had been reported to Apple and when.
We disclosed most of the bugs used in these chains to Apple, and are going to disclose the rest, if not already.<p>>Just as a reminder for some folks here: During their WeWorm research in July–September 2026, Calif didn't stop at proving RCE to Tencent—they spent an extra week using AI to build a fully functional, self-propagating zero-click worm across three live phones, triggering temporary account bans from Tencent during testing.<p>Not sure what exactly your point is. The WeWorm demo was done in a controlled environment.<p>Also we do this for free. We don't charge neither Tencent nor Apple. We don't even take their bounties. Why can't we have some fun?<p>If you're so upset about how we do it, my suggestion is go find your own bugs.
You literally just said your company released an exploit demo <i>before</i> disclosing some of these vulnerabilities to the vendor.<p>As for your suggestion, I was an infosec researcher, I worked for 3 years with vendors to help them patch before I can even tweet anything about my research. I even flew to their HQ to assist in patching when needed. After Covid I transitioned to a development role, and now I'm on the other end, handling security reports from researchers.<p>Based on this dual point of view, let me tell you that for a security engineer in Apple that will learn from your video about vuln your company did <i>not</i> even disclose yet, this karma harvesting is as far from "coordinated disclosure" as possible. Their managers will be fuming, and the stress they will be in given the media frenzy will be off the charts.
Very cool work, I love what you guys are doing!
Is it irresponsible? They've revealed barely anything about how it works, besides that the first step is a PDF, and something about Glyph Grift.
What is the value of revealing <i>anything</i> at this time point, when no patch is out? What use is it for the public?<p>Just last Black hat there was a "glimpse disclosure" that was later followed with proper fixes and details. I gave my AI agent the details that were supposed to be "useless", before the patch was out, and it found the vulnerability in less than an hour.<p>We shouldn't even enter this game. And with the track record of this specific group, I didn't exactly get the impression that their incentive is to help fix things, but rather to promote their brand while others be damned.
Please let this be real. I need my 17 Pro to be jailbroken. I may keep my 13 Mini if it works for it too. This will be bliss.
What are these videos actually demonstrating?
A couple of PDF exploits from iMessage and Signal leading to code execution, and an app that roots the phone. Also, they seem to have managed to make their malware survive a reboot, which is difficult. That's another reason why automatic reboots are considered a security feature: exploits leaving malware in-memory are a lot easier to build than malware that survives a full reboot, passing all stages of signature checks and validation.
Yes, why don't they just say it instead of posting videos. Opening a sinister PDF in iOS can give them access to what exactly? anything/everything? What iOS versions or devices, etc?
Marketing by security researchers and companies has gotten unbearable. They only want their name out there and not actually make devices more secure.
We disclosed most bugs to Apple, and are going to disclose the rest. We've disclosed probably close to 100 bugs to Apple in the past 6 months.<p>We've also been working with closely with the Signal Foundation to help them reduce the attack surface.<p>It's not true that we don't want to make devices more secure. We do and it's why we do this research.<p>We also do want our name out there because we're having a lot of fun and want to share that with our friends and the rest of the world.
how are they supposed to get paid?
Check out <a href="https://calif.io/research/the-great-glyph-grift" rel="nofollow">https://calif.io/research/the-great-glyph-grift</a>, which shows one could go wrong with PDF in iOS.<p>We're gonna publish more in the coming weeks. Writing these blog posts take time, and we've been busy with another PHP thing.
Rooting, pretty much. Aka, executing code which shows their flying logo, but could also be exfiltrating data without displaying anything.
This post gave me flashbacks to jailbreak era w/ Cydia. It's interesting to think that a lot of the those old plugins and tweaks have basically become standard supported features of the iOS now (SBSettings, Activator, WinterBoard, Zephyr, ...).
would this let you use the usb port to host serial devices? Swooning pretty hard at the idea of this. <3
Stay on 27.0 or upgrade to 27.0.1?
How did they bypass MTE? Wasn't it suppose to make such exploits basically impossible?
We don't know if Calif bypassed MIE.<p>When they hacked the M5 (one week after release!), they used a data-only attack, which is outside the scope of MIE. That could be the case here, or something else entirely. We don't know.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139219">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139219</a>
Someone correct me please if I’m wrong but is this because iOS doesn’t sandbox their processes? I think I read Safari in particular doesn’t, but wonder if this is system-wide issue.<p>The more of this stuff we see, the more people will start using GrapheneOS, I guess.<p>Also wonder why they choose to publish and not cash-in the Apple bounty..
iOS does sandbox their processes really well, that's why this hack was as difficult as it was. The Safari thing you're talking about is JIT - iOS disables all runtime code generation across the system except in Safari (for JavaScript), but this is a completely separate thing from sandboxing.
Actually, no, I now remember this was about iMessage specifically and how it isn't completely isolated/runs as system service or sth? Or about the renderer?<p>Which would make sense because these attacks seem to exploit the same weakness.
iMessage's attachment renderer is also sandboxed, actually. You might be talking about this vulnerability: <a href="https://projectzero.google/2021/12/a-deep-dive-into-nso-zero-click.html" rel="nofollow">https://projectzero.google/2021/12/a-deep-dive-into-nso-zero...</a>, but the second half of the vulnerability exploit chain was finding a way out of the CoreGraphics (Apple's image rendering library) sandbox to hack the rest of the system.
Is this day0 or did apple and signal get notified?
so i see we're still going with the apocalypse today too
why do we see pdf viewer exploits on ios when we have sandboxing mechanisms nowadays like wasm? Or is this exploit accounting for the sandbox breakage?
I'm tired, boss
Right that does it. I'm fucking off to the pub and drinking myself under the table after this week.
Ok so you became "root", but who knows, Apple might have "superroot" and if that is not enough "god-mode".
guess who put themselves on the must-hack list of every single national intelligence agency
No anime girl videos. Progress!
Man... PDF is such an unfortunate file format.
Oct 16th post;<p>More recently: iPhone Duo Jailbreak vid
<a href="https://x.com/calif_io/status/2113570095549337977" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/calif_io/status/2113570095549337977</a>
(<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206680">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206680</a>)
Apple doesn't use AI to vibecode and/or pentest their software?<p>I think we have a right to know.
This made me miss Cydia and the old jailbreaking days so much. Was such an exciting time to have an iPhone with the tinkering. Anyone still remember iDitDahText <a href="https://iditdahtext.com/iDitDahText.html" rel="nofollow">https://iditdahtext.com/iDitDahText.html</a>?
Slightly offtopic but I find it slightly funny that they have accomplished to hack the iPhone yet the name of the third video is: Can you iPhone do this?<p>I would like to think that they might've created the video so fast and perhaps out of so excitement that the name of the title had the typo :-D
Too bad this will be patched instead of allowing the device owner to control their own device.<p>Of course it's better that they found that before some shady mercenary spyware company, but I'd also want to control my ios device the same way they did in the video, but no, that's not for us.
Now - does the Signal 1-click work on Graphene?
In this thread. Apple Acolytes Anonymous.<p>Seriously, California has a cathedral problem, may the vault dweller succeed.
public wont be getting this jailbreak, it is just another flex like elon's flipping car.
I think we will probably see more and more restrictions on frontier models in the coming months. This is not what behemoths like Apple and Sony want to see.<p>Paradoxically, people are happier to buy things that they have control over, but boy, Apple loves to control every layer of consumerism.
Apple doesn't want security researchers to find bugs? Then why do they have a $2m bug bounty?
If the current frontier allows for this, we can probably expect alternative models to reach the same spot in a matter of months as well. The cat's out of the bag, for better of worse.
The paradox is that if the models are restricted, more exposed software will exist. I'm not convinced you can make a model that allows you to build secure software without it also being able to build exploits.
Do we want everyone who doesn’t know how to program a car to reprogram their car? I.e. I think there should be restrictions on frontier models to ensure safety of others.
First of all this is crazy that even on hn we were a few days behind this.<p>Second fuck Apple. Fuck all tech companies. And seriously fuck late stage capitalism. Foss or nothing. There should be a rule if you pay for it it has to be foss. This way people can still make proprietary but they just can’t charge for it.<p>We have zero privacy, zero security, all our politicians and all the corporations are against us.<p>Media parsing is an endless exploit vector. Like fuck. At some point you have to be like they (not just Apple) keep it broken<p>An yea I know foss gets these issues too. But if the only option was foss, then at least the whole world’s focus would be on it
Bro rewrite IOS in Rust :)
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My dream is to release an iOS app that self-installs and not say anything special about it other than having a "Download for iPhone" button on my website. If someone asked me, I'd answer: "Huh, what do you mean? It's our app for the iPhone."
BASED
Eli5 the iMessage video? They open a file that calls their webapp?
Curious to see how many tokens was spent
marvelous to see that your kids and grandkids wont be safe because capable people will rather do this than care about safety and security, opening up more and more attack surface ...<p>god fucking damn it, they really turned hackers into exactly what they wanted.<p>one can't help but manically lough at the ridiculous deformed minds of these people.<p>and it feeds corporations in such a perfect manner. if you don't want to be at the whims of disgusting private people that constantly escape law enforcement, all you can do is join a corpo and their VPNs so you have an admin team with faces and names that you can rely on and who know you do your part in the company. law enforcement is fucking worthless. I can't believe this. staying anonymous all the time, never letting any normal people with normal lives know when they are in danger or being watched.<p>god fucking damn it, these fucking lying lefty fucking fucks
I guess I've never really understood why people who don't like the way the iPhone and apple ecosystem work buy apple products. There are plenty of other options out there. Every time articles about this and the App Store pop up it seems as if the comments are filled with a whole lot of android users that are upset that iPhone's aren't like androids. That's not to say those are all of the comments and there aren't clearly iPhone users who want these options but again, why buy a product that doesn't support these things if they're so important to you in the first place.