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Cory Doctorow

This is *not* good for Apple customers. It exposes them to continuous, serious privacy risks. Our mobile devices are keepers of our most intimate secrets, and when mobile security fails, the consequences are grave, as Apple discovered in the hardest way possible, ten years ago:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_cel

Apple's answer to this is grimly hilarious. The company's position is that if you want to have real security in your communications, you should buy your friends iPhones.

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12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
9 comments
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Presumably, if those friends - or merchants, or colleagues - don't want to change operating systems and throw away their device and all their apps, you should just stop talking to them:

finance.yahoo.com/news/tim-coo

One of the clinical signs that someone is in a cult is that they are encouraged to isolate themselves from people who aren't also in that cult:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolatio

32/

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

But there are billions of Apple customers and only a small (but vocal and obnoxious!) minority of those customers are actual cult members, which means that there are billions of people who'd prefer to have private, secure communications with everyone in their lives, not just their fellow Apple customers.

33/

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

That's where #BeeperMini comes in: it's a third-party Android version of iMessage that builds on the work of a teenager who reverse-engineered iMessage and found a way to let Android users receive secure messages sent by Apple customers:

pluralistic.net/2023/12/07/blu

34/

12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This was an immense service to Apple customers, correcting a gaping security vulnerability in Apple's flagship product, that had been deliberately introduced, putting the company's profits ahead of its customers' safety and privacy.

Apple immediately rolled out a series of countermeasures to block Beeper Mini. When The @verge's @davidpierce asked them why, Apple said they did it *to protect their customers' security* (!!):

theverge.com/2023/12/9/2399515

35/

This was an immense service to Apple customers, correcting a gaping security vulnerability in Apple's flagship product, that had been deliberately introduced, putting the company's profits ahead of its customers' safety and privacy.

Apple immediately rolled out a series of countermeasures to block Beeper Mini. When The @verge's @davidpierce asked them why, Apple said they did it *to protect their customers' security* (!!):

12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The company claimed that there was some nonspecific way in which Beeper Mini weakened the security of Apple customers, though they offered no evidence in support of that claim. Remember, the gold standard for security claims is #ProofOfConcept code, not hand-waving:

nostarch.com/gtfo

36/

12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

For its part, #Beeper engaged in a brief but intense cat-and-mouse game with Apple, taking countermeasures and countercountermeasures to preserve Apple customers' access to secure communications with Android users:

eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/with

37/

12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Apple used its $3 trillion megaphone to condemn Beeper Mini even after Beeper published source code for Beeper Mini so anyone could verify that nothing nefarious was going on:

blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-movin

Meanwhile, Apple's cultists rallied behind the company. Not only would No True Apple Customer ever want to have secure communications with an Android user, but it was unfair for Beeper to profit by accessing Apple's messaging infrastructure, which Apple has to pay to maintain.

38/

Apple used its $3 trillion megaphone to condemn Beeper Mini even after Beeper published source code for Beeper Mini so anyone could verify that nothing nefarious was going on:

blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-movin

Meanwhile, Apple's cultists rallied behind the company. Not only would No True Apple Customer ever want to have secure communications with an Android user, but it was unfair for Beeper to profit by accessing Apple's messaging infrastructure, which Apple has to pay to maintain.

12 January at 17:22 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This is some serious upside-down cult logic. *Beeper* isn't accessing Apple's infrastructure: Apple's *customers* are accessing Apple's infrastructure. If there were no Apple customers trying to talk to Android users, there would be no load on Apple's servers.

But those customers don't count. They aren't real Apple customers, because they want to do things that benefit *them*, not Apple's shareholders. In other words: they're holding it wrong.

39/

12 January at 17:22 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by #WilWheaton! Pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback:

thebezzle.org

eof/

rDoctorow’s novels don’t just tell kick ass stories; they moonlight as instruction manuals for revolution. —Peter Watts
12 January at 17:23 | Open on mamot.fr
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