Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 07-06-2019

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

Apple users will have protection for their devices, after the company announced a new location-tracking feature at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote.

Wired reports that in upcoming versions of iOS and macOS, the new “Find My” feature will broadcast Bluetooth signals from Apple devices even when they’re offline, allowing nearby Apple devices to relay their location to the cloud.

That should help users locate their stolen laptop even when it’s sleeping in a thief’s bag.

According to Wired, Apple’s elaborate encryption scheme is also designed not only to prevent interlopers from identifying or tracking an iDevice from its Bluetooth signal, but also to keep Apple itself from learning device locations, even as it allows you to pinpoint yours.

Apple Craig Federighi says the whole interaction of the new feature is end-to-end encrypted and anonymous.

“It uses just tiny bits of data that piggyback on existing network traffic so there’s no need to worry about your battery life, your data usage, or your privacy.”

Here’s how the new system works, as Apple describes it, step by step:

• When you first set up Find My on your Apple devices and Apple confirmed you do need at least two devices for this feature to work, it generates an unguessable private key that’s shared on all those devices.

• Each device also generates a public key. This is the “beacon” that your devices will broadcast out via Bluetooth to nearby devices.

• That public key frequently changes, “rotating” periodically to a new number. But every time it does, the change makes it that much harder for anyone to use your Bluetooth beacons to track your movements

• If your device is stolen and even if the thief carries it around disconnected from the internet, it will emit its rotating public key via Bluetooth. A nearby stranger’s iPhone, with no interaction from its owner, will pick up the signal, check its own location, and encrypt that location data including the hash of the devices public key and upload it to the cloud.

• When you want to find your device, you turn to your second Apple device which contains both the same private key and has generated the same series of rotating public keys uploads its version of the public key to find the matching hash.

• Apple returns the encrypted location of your stolen device to your second Apple device, which can use its private key to decrypt it and tell you the laptop’s last known location.