Posted on 07/21/2014 7:22:14 PM PDT by eyeamok
Zdziarksi is certain that these mechanisms, whatever their purpose, are no accident. He has seen them become more complex, and they seem to get as much maintenance and attention as iOS' advertised features. Even as Apple adds new security features, the company may be adding ways to circumvent them.
(Excerpt) Read more at tomsguide.com ...
Anyone that owns an Apple product and doesn’t yet know that it is LOADED WITH SPYWARE must be living on another planet.
ping
No headaches there,
I don't use it for anything serious like billpay or stocks or even buying anything, anything with my real name.
They are welcome to know my yahoo email name or my favorite pandora and shoutcast stations. If I was paranoid I could put it in a metal box while driving someplace I dont want the gov to know, (my phone nav app keeps track of my driving routes), but I don't see the point.
I also recently learned that my business supports Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client for work related email accounts on personally owned iphones. So they must think that works.
Meh. Everything is rigged to spy on us. Microsoft gave back doors to the Feds LONG ago.
I love my iPhone. I love my Mac. I’m keeping them. They wanna spy, have at it. I may be a cantankerous old coot but I’m also a boring old coot.
It’s just too tempting and way too easy.... They just can’t help themselves when the pickens’ are so easy and so profitable.
Evil is like that.
"copies and relays nearly all the data stored on an iOS device, even when Backup Encryption is enabled. It is separate from iOS' documented backup and sync features."
turns out to be a fully documented component of iOS 7.1.0.32's Apple Mobile Device Support and is needed for synchronization between an iPod or iPhone and iTunes. Oh, it's been in earlier versions of iOS, too.
His second sentence in that quote is just ignorance, as this is an library file called when needed from the iOS library sync functions by the BackupAgent and SyncAgent system, but is essentially a system function, not a "feature" the user or developer ever needs to call.
Not knowing what "com.apple.mobile.file_relay," does shows me "Jonathan Zdziarski, an iOS forensic examiner," does not "know more about iPhones than any other non-Apple employee." I doubt he's even paid to be an Apple iOS developer.
From what my cursory investigation uncovered, it apparently is used to communicate with various versions of iTunes as needed to DO the synchronization of backing up the iPhone and would have to be able to do that regardless of the encrypted status of the data on the iPhone. It needs to do exactly what he describes it doing: copy everything on the iPhone to another device, that has his underware wadded.
This is akin to someone finding CUPS on a Mac, UNIX, or Linux system and claiming it has no legitimate function, and it can't be related to PRINT and because they don't know what they're looking at, it must be nefariously intended. (CUPS = Common Unix Printing System)
Apparently, many of the others he's upset about appear to be precursors to implementing Apple's newest iOS 8 device-sharing-over-WIFI functions such as "Instant Hotspot," iPhone linked calling on iPad and Mac, and the "Handoff" document and project cross device neutrality. Oh my! These "hidden, undocumented "apps" link the iOS device to another known and identifiable Mac or iOS device and share data across a wired or WIFI network, exactly what Apple is intending they do. Horrors!
Without these Apple only software devices, those new functions would be impossible. I suspect the guy simply does not know what he's looking at. He knows just enough to be dangerous. . . in spreading FUD before tomorrow's financial call.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
If I wanted to be somewhere without anyone knowing I wouldn’t take any tech with me at all and I’d get there in and old car without any navigation system, onstar, etc. I’d avoid streets with traffic cameras, pay for gas with cash, etc
Just the iPhones only.
Thank-you for this important info. It could silent the conspiracy theory nuts on FR.
Folks, please do not put on the tinfoil hats on! Thank-you!
Worse than me being spied upon would be the job the poor bloke has to sit through the hours of spying on me. It would be certain death by boredom!
Thanks Swordmaker.
I'd laugh myself silly if I learned the NSA is full of monitor-gazing desk-jockeys on see-saws.
(Reference to the old TV show "The Prisoner.")
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