this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
322 points (95.5% liked)

Technology

55766 readers
3039 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
enu
[email protected]
L4s
322
iPhones have been exposing your unique MAC despite Apple’s promises otherwise — “From the get-go, this feature was useless,” researcher says of feature put into iOS 14 (arstechnica.com)
submitted 8 months ago by L4s to c/technology
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

iPhones have been exposing your unique MAC despite Apple’s promises otherwise — “From the get-go, this feature was useless,” researcher says of feature put into iOS 14::“From the get-go, this feature was useless,” researcher says of feature put into iOS 14.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don’t understand why this article isn’t BS. It was meant to prevent passive snooping. If I connect to a network, it needs to know who I am.

I’ve worked with companies that implement this type of tech for monitoring road traffic congestion. IOS reduced the number of ‘saw same phone twice and can calculate speed’

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago

You are who you say you are to a network though, at least at layer 2.

If you say you’re one MAC address one time and another next time then so you are.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say I’m a device trying to connect to a network. Among other things I tell it “can I have an IP address, my MAC address is Majestic”. It says in turn, sure and notes down Majestic and routes or switches things to me when another device says it wants to reach my IP. In Wi-Fi it basically shouts out it has a packet for Majestic and sends it out onto the air with my unique encryption key I previously negotiated and I am listening for packets for Majestic and grab and process that packet. Now if I go back and connect again and call myself Dull it’ll do the same thing. Those names being stand-ins for MAC addresses of course.

This is simplified of course. And this is why MAC whitelisting is a futile attempt at security.