An air of unease set into the security circles on Sunday as they prepared for the disclosure of high-severity vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi Protected Access II protocol that make it possible for attackers to eavesdrop Wi-Fi traffic passing between computers and access points.
The proof-of-concept exploit is called KRACK, short for Key Reinstallation Attacks. The research has been a closely guarded secret for weeks ahead of a coordinated disclosure that's scheduled for 8am Monday, East Coast time. A website disclosing the vulnerability said it affects the core WPA2 protocol itself and is effective against devices running the Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, and OpenBSD operating systems, as well as MediaTek Linksys, and other types of devices. The site warned attackers can exploit it to decrypt a wealth of sensitive data that's normally encrypted by the nearly ubiquitous Wi-Fi encryption protocol.
"This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on. The attack works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites."
The point about racial bias, and whether Apple’s Face ID will reliably and regularly work for users of all races, is particularly poignant since it’s not just an issue of security but one that is so entrenched in our cultural zeitgeist.
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Was Apple’s data base big enough and diverse enough to be truly race inclusive? Soon enough we will know, and there will be much the whole industry will learn to update and hone our practices so that this technology functions just as a convenience — and not necessarily a cultural hot button.
Imagine a world in which we can take a picture of anything and let the algorithms sort it out. Maybe we do that in real time through a lens — be it the phone screen, or some wearable, or something else — or maybe we do it after the fact. When scrolling through a camera roll, maybe we see a picture we took, and with one tap, we see everything we could ever want to know about what’s in that image. It’s like an augmented memory. And it’s all within sight.
What all three phones have though, is Apple's new A11 Bionic chip, which happens to be the most powerful mobile processor on the market right now by far. They also have fast charging, wireless charging, the ability to record 4K video at 60fps, and to record 1080p Slo Mo at 240fps.
Ultimately, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are the ones that you'd get if you don't like change. The iPhone X doesn't have a home button anymore, which means that the entire way that you use your phone will be different.
So I’m cool with it. Lean, Agile, Waterfall, whatever, the fact is we need some kind of common ideology to co-operate in large numbers. None of them are evil, so it’s not like you’re picking racism over socialism or something. Whichever one you pick is not going to reflect the reality, but if you expect perfection you will be disappointed. And watch yourself for unspoken or unarticulated collective fictions. Your life is full of them. Like that your opinion is important.