Researchers and Hackers Use Rare Dev-Fused Prototype iPhones to Unlock Security Secrets

[pratikindia]

Most of these devices seem to be stolen from and smuggled out of factories like Foxconn in China. Apple is apparently "well aware" of the fact that dev-fused devices are available. Apple has "ramped up efforts" to keep these devices from leaving Foxconn and does go after dev-fused iPhone sellers.

A small price to make in China.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Interesting... law enforcement hires companies that use stolen property to provide them services.

 

[rivertrip]

IP as a concept, as it exists today, was made up out of thin air by Oracle and Microsoft in the early 1990s as was way to lock out competitors. It's why we have the rediculous oligopoly situation today that let's Apple charge $1500 for a $500 piece of hardware.

Most of you grew up in the absurd situation we have today, so you think it's normal.

It is not. If you explained "IP" to a programmer in those days they would have laughed. Open Source grew out of programmers, who were appalled at the growing IP machine, to try to head it off before it took over everything.

That movement has more or less failed now. The machine won.

IP is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist BS that Congress is supposed to protect us from. Instead Congress sucks up money from companies like Apple, funding their lavish lifestyles, while average people continue to be screwed.

IP existed long before Oracle and Microsoft, even before Bell Labs. Eli Whitney owned IP for his version of the cotton gin, He filed many (unsuccessful) lawsuits trying to enforce the patents.

 

[Tech198]

$2,000 is allot difference than $20,0000

You would think they would do what everyone else does and wait till phones come out, They already have the skills to hack.. No point in getting in early is there.

Perhaps not THAT many skills then

 

[ianday]

Me too. I need to get into my old 3G that is in disabled mode, thanks to a prankster friend.

I am wondering if they are using that iPhone 4 to trick the iPhone 8 into thinking it is dev-fused.

 

[nt5672]

I don't think "development units without security measures installed" are equal to "retail devices with backdoors installed".

Depends on how it's implemented, which we do not know. So you cannot rule it out either.
[doublepost=1551979714][/doublepost]

That's what the original Medium article said. But it may not be possible to undo the change. If that fuse exists (for example) between the layers of a circuit board, you're not going to be able to replace it with a new one.

The fuse is more than likely a silicon fuse inside the chip. It's also likely that the fuse is an input at a particular address. That means the base code is present in all devices and some bootstrap program checks the fuse address and then ignores the code that makes the phone just a computer. If so, this is easily hackable, once someone figures it out.
[doublepost=1551979819][/doublepost]

eFuses can't be "unblown" and the enforcement of such security fuses is in the bootrom. If you figure out how to bypass the fuse check, then you can probably also figure out how to bypass a signature branch check even if such fuses didn't exist.

Yep. Never said you could unblow the fuse.

 

[organicCPU]

Hopefully someday a good completely open source (software and hardware) phone will come to market and we can leave all the proprietary bullpoo behind as a bad memory.

I like the modular hardware concept…
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2016/11/17/sustainable-fairphone-2-weve-got-results/
https://code.fairphone.com

 

[Hater]

$2,000 is allot difference than $20,0000

You would think they would do what everyone else does and wait till phones come out, They already have the skills to hack.. No point in getting in early is there.

Perhaps not THAT many skills then

They're used to find an entry point into the locked down phone.