Australian Consumer Regulator Sues Apple Over 'Error 53' iPhone Shutdowns

Wha wha what??? Pretty sure that if you enabled touch id to unlock your phone, and touch id stopped working, you wouldn't be able to access your phone at all, let alone operate it. So, it is indeed required to operate the phone for those that have it enabled as a security feature.

Type in your passcode. You have to do it every time you restart your phone.
 
This feels like damned if you do damned if you don't situation. They allow 3rd party finger print sensors to be installed; and someone uses it to bypass security on the phone and people are all up in arms saying that they are not secure. They prevent 3rd party finger print scanners and everyone is all up in arms saying that they are trying to screw the consumer.

No, they are just trying to be cautious. Sometime that's the right thing to do. Now, bricking the device because of an invalid finger print scanner, that seemed over the top; instead just disable that feature and allow the rest to work correctly. Which, is the approach Apple has since taken with this.

You can never please everyone. :(
 
I am proud to live in a country that will stand up for consumers against the largest corporations on Earth.
So you love a country full of consumers who don't read the terms and conditions.

Void warranty, and depending on how, lose device. I rather keep error 53 occurring so if I lost my phone my information would be safe.
[doublepost=1491493982][/doublepost]
Right, but they're suing for killing the phones, not throwing up a warning/error box saying "your phone may be insecure".
A warning will do nothing to a thief who stole a phone and will use their fingerprint to open bank apps and transfer money.
 
This feels like damned if you do damned if you don't situation. They allow 3rd party finger print sensors to be installed; and someone uses it to bypass security on the phone and people are all up in arms saying that they are not secure. They prevent 3rd party finger print scanners and everyone is all up in arms saying that they are trying to screw the consumer.
If someone does something they are not suppose to do(use unauthorized parts), and something bad happens (security gets bypassed), it is probably on them, and I doubt people would feel too bad for them.

Now, when a company purposely bricks their device because there is an unauthorized part, then people might be all up in arms about it, and rightfully so.

Lets think of this using automobiles, since people like to use them as analogies all the time. If I replace my ignition key switch (the old turn it with a key style) with a button switch that has no security, would it be right for the car's manufacture to disable my car remotely? I don't think it would be. If I get my car stolen because of using a part that didn't belong on my car could I blame the car's manufacture? I could, but it would be ridiculous for me to do so.
 
The problem happened when people got their phone fixed by a third-party, not Apple, and a software check detected the third-party part and was rightfully suspicious since the phone hardware and its fingerprint sensor (used for Apple Pay e.g. access to your bank account) was not an expected part/ID/config whatever.

QUICK SUE THE BIGGEST COMPANY ON THE PLANET FOR TRYING TO BE CAUTIOUS, they can afford it right?

Apple is *the* most sued company on earth. Good job Australia, all other problems must be solved in your country to be suing Apple over a SOFTWARE doodad that was fixed to make people stop bitching their hacked up phones were popping a dialog.
While their claim may have some validity, in this particular case, Apple's caution to protect the integrity of their Secure Enclave, a vital part of what makes ApplePay and customer banking info so secure, should override any minor inconvenience experienced by some consumers, especially in light of Apple promptly reimbursing affected customers with working devices, and their diligence in providing a timely fix.
 
Maybe instead of bricking the phone there should have been a constant warning that unidentified/unsecure components were detected. Finger print sensor should have been disabled ... but overall I am with Apple here.
I'm quite sure nowadays the finger print sensor is enabled, which leaves your phone usable.

Just a warning would be bad if the phone is actually in the hands of a thief who swapped the sensor to unlock the phone. It is absolutely correct that a manipulated sensor must NOT be capable of unlocking the phone. However, pin unlock should continue to work.
 
Nothing says "standing up for consumers" like allowing janky third-party biometrics to compromise TouchID, eh?

I think it is standing up for consumers, when Apple is deliberately bricking devices. If the touchID could be compromised with unauthorized parts, and Apple was worried about security issues, it could have been disable. Bricking is unnecessary.
 
Sorry if this has been said, but surely the point of bricking the phone was to render it inoperable to someone who stole it and replaced the sensor to gain access?
 
Sorry if this has been said, but surely the point of bricking the phone was to render it inoperable to someone who stole it and replaced the sensor to gain access?
I don't think so, as you need the passcode to unlock an iPhone after restart.

Unless they are hot-swapping the sensor, which I am not sure if it is even possible.
 
I don't think so, as you need the passcode to unlock an iPhone after restart.

Unless they are hot-swapping the sensor, which I am not sure if it is even possible.

Ah yes. Good point. Well then I guess it wasn't properly thought through at the time. But presumably no one died, and Apple fixed it. I bet the Sun still came up the following day :)
 
I am not saying this is bad, but the cost of the two year warranty gets added to everyone's Apple device purchase in Australia. In this forum, there are complaints all the time about the Australian Apple products, when compared with the US price. The extended warranty is one reason for the difference.

I'm fairly sure there was no immediate price jump when this happened. I'd be quite dismayed if this was the case, its part of Australian consumer law and the cost should not be past onto consumers as it should be a requirement of trading here.
[doublepost=1491512003][/doublepost]
Haha! Typical ex-criminal Aussie low brow!
Don't bother reading the terms and conditions!

Wow I assume you know nothing about Australia.
 
I think it is standing up for consumers, when Apple is deliberately bricking devices. If the touchID could be compromised with unauthorized parts, and Apple was worried about security issues, it could have been disable. Bricking is unnecessary.
Didn't Apple acknowledge that bricking wasn't the intended consequence and address that in an iOS update?
 
I'm fairly sure there was no immediate price jump when this happened. I'd be quite dismayed if this was the case, its part of Australian consumer law and the cost should not be past onto consumers as it should be a requirement of trading here.
Price changes at Apple are usually done periodically, and not usually tied to a particular event from what I noticed over the years.

Warranties costs most certainly get past down to the customer, regardless if it is laws or not.
 
Price changes at Apple are usually done periodically, and not usually tied to a particular event from what I noticed over the years.

Warranties costs most certainly get past down to the customer, regardless if it is laws or not.

That's crap - it's not a warranty it's a condition of trading in Australia (if I am correct). It SHOULD NOT be passed down to the consumer. Apple already rorts us through not paying its tax.
 
That's crap - it's not a warranty it's a condition of trading in Australia (if I am correct). It SHOULD NOT be passed down to the consumer. Apple already rorts us through not paying its tax.

Whatever you want to call it, warranty, trade condition, or tariff, Apple can pass that along to customers. It is a little silly to think otherwise.

Apple sets the price of their devices, not a government.

If a business plans on making a certain profit margin, they take in account all the product costs, including warranties, shipping costs, tariffs, and even the probability of losing a lawsuit.

Australia is not immuned to this, neither is any other country
 
Whatever you want to call it, warranty, trade condition, or tariff, Apple can pass that along to customers. It is a little silly to think otherwise.

Apple sets the price of their devices, not a government.

If a business plans on making a certain profit margin, they take in account all the product costs, including warranties, shipping costs, tariffs, and even the probability of losing a lawsuit.

Australia is not immuned to this, neither is any other country

I'm not disputing that Apple may or may have done that, I just think it is wrong.
 
So security be damned? What if someone steals your phone, replaces the fingerprint sensor and then uses that to bypass the security to get your bank, contacts and whatever else is on your phone. Think about this just a little.

OK I thought about it and I still want to be able to have a 3rd party fix my phone.

So you love a country full of consumers who don't read the terms and conditions.

Void warranty, and depending on how, lose device. I rather keep error 53 occurring so if I lost my phone my information would be safe.
[doublepost=1491493982][/doublepost]
A warning will do nothing to a thief who stole a phone and will use their fingerprint to open bank apps and transfer money.

Apple terms and conditions are not universally enforceable
 
The problem happened when people got their phone fixed by a third-party, not Apple, and a software check detected the third-party part and was rightfully suspicious since the phone hardware and its fingerprint sensor (used for Apple Pay e.g. access to your bank account) was not an expected part/ID/config whatever.

QUICK SUE THE BIGGEST COMPANY ON THE PLANET FOR TRYING TO BE CAUTIOUS, they can afford it right?

Apple is *the* most sued company on earth. Good job Australia, all other problems must be solved in your country to be suing Apple over a SOFTWARE doodad that was fixed to make people stop bitching their hacked up phones were popping a dialog.

Yes, I agree with you Apple should open source the IOS and Mac system, especially the kernel for researchers, students and hobbyists.
 
QUICK SUE THE BIGGEST COMPANY ON THE PLANET

What does Saudi Aramco have to do with this?
[doublepost=1491573770][/doublepost]
Haha! Typical ex-criminal Aussie low brow!
Don't bother reading the terms and conditions!

Terms and conditions for any device from any company are subservient to the law of the land in which Apple trade. Consumer protections my friend.
 
So security be damned? What if someone steals your phone, replaces the fingerprint sensor and then uses that to bypass the security to get your bank, contacts and whatever else is on your phone. Think about this just a little.

Think about it more.

Replacing the fingerprint sensor doesn't change the mathematical print representation stored in the Secure Enclave, which is what has to be matched. The sensor itself doesn't make that decision.

Btw, same thing will apply for facial or iris recognition. The cameras just pass along what they see. The Secure Enclave code then does the parsing and authentication against stored info.

Nothing says "standing up for consumers" like allowing janky third-party biometrics to compromise TouchID, eh?

Had nothing to do with third party. Replacing with an official Apple sensor also causes a rejection, unless an Apple tech uses a revalidation tool to match it to the phone.

In any case, even Apple said it was a mistake to brick the entire phone.

Wha wha what??? Pretty sure that if you enabled touch id to unlock your phone, and touch id stopped working, you wouldn't be able to access your phone at all, let alone operate it. So, it is indeed required to operate the phone for those that have it enabled as a security feature.

Nope. Touch Id is simply a shortcut to entering your passcode. If Touch Id fails five times in a row, iOS reverts to asking for the passcode... even with a perfectly stock working sensor.

If a third party repairs your phone, and then that repair directly enabled others to circumvent touch id to unlock your lost iphone...

How?

Half the posts in this thread show that many people still don't understand how Touch Id works.
 
Last edited:
I'm quite sure nowadays the finger print sensor is enabled, which leaves your phone usable.

Just a warning would be bad if the phone is actually in the hands of a thief who swapped the sensor to unlock the phone. It is absolutely correct that a manipulated sensor must NOT be capable of unlocking the phone. However, pin unlock should continue to work.

This is why I believe your original post that soem security decision was made that was overly cautious and went out, and that it wasn't their end goal fo bricking so many devices that were just being repaired.

In reality, there's no need to brick an entire phone for a single part that "MAY" potentially be compromised (remember, there was no evidence of compromise, just that the software said if it was not the original sensor, brick the phone)

The bricking of the phone was the part that went to far. When detecting a replaced sensor or something that potentially inteferes with it, the OS should disable the sensor and disconnect it from interacting with the security features. the phone itself should not be disabled, although some disabled features might be innevitable.

Similar to how Samsung handles KNOX. If you do something to your phone that trips KNOX's security to believe it's compromised, The entire samsung device doesn't get bricked. But KNOX shuts down and refuses to let you use KNOX required services. But at no point is the entire device bricked with the requirement of buying a new one.

I believe it was a mistake by Apple. Not an intentional one. And they did fix it shortly after it started becoming more and more prevalent.
[doublepost=1491579417][/doublepost]
So security be damned? What if someone steals your phone, replaces the fingerprint sensor and then uses that to bypass the security to get your bank, contacts and whatever else is on your phone. Think about this just a little.

Bricking the device is not a requirement in this case either.

First: for a "thief" to do so, woudl require shutting down the device to swap the sensor. iOS will always ask for a passcode on restart of the device, so the fingerprint sensor is still useless here.

Second: If the OS does detect a compromised fingerprint sensor, the more reasonable action is to just block use of the fingerprint sensor as a means of authentication, forcing fall back to passcode.

Bricking the device entirely, making it unusable, and then the initial response of "just buy a new phone" was extremely unreasonable. Very anti-competitive (many countries have laws prohibiting hardware manufacturers from banning 3rd party repair).

And even Apple admitted this after the fact and released an OS update that did what I said above. Block the offensive part, without bricking the whole phoen
[doublepost=1491579560][/doublepost]
Crying over spilt milk!

what if that spilled milk made your $1000 device unusable while losing access to all your data?

And what if that spilled milk was intentionally poured onto your device, by the people who sold you that device?

your attempt at analogy and diminishing peoples impact by equating it to spilled milk shows how little you understand.
 
I believe it was a mistake by Apple. Not an intentional one. And they did fix it shortly after it started becoming more and more prevalent.

Agreed. Some of us older guys said from the start that we believed that it was an unintended mistake at a low level. Top brass would never have signed off on something that would invite such bad PR and possible class actions.

I've been programming for close to a half century now, and I've seen hundreds if not thousands of such goofs :) After a while, you can sense what what went wrong.

To me, it smacked of something like a newly hired coder who "fixed" an action that he thought was missing. ("Hmmm. Error 53 is commented out here. Must be a mistake. Let me re-enable the check. My bosses will be so proud of my extra initiative!")

Then, when the **** hits the fan, the first response from the lower ranks would be that it was working as intentioned, and the PR folks repeat that to the press. Then more inquiries are made the truth comes out internally :D
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top