The problem with AirDrop is that the protocol requests the address and phone number verified via the Apple ID from the sender’s device and the recipient’s device when establishing a connection if these are not in the address book of both parties. Although they are stored as hash values, they are fairly easy to decipher: the phone number consists only of digits and is easy to decode using a brute-force attack. For emails, attackers guess the usual alias structures, then search for possible matches in dictionaries and databases of leaked emails.
According to Heinrich, it was only a matter of time before the security gaps in AirDrop were abused. However, the researchers have so far only intercepted the data during transmission attempts. The fact that the personal data of AirDrop contacts is stored locally on the iPhone was previously unknown.
Now I was convinced. The ‘Auto Unlock with Apple Watch’ feature seems to be somehow related to a background system service that is also responsible for Continuity Camera — and flipping the switch on and off causes that service to reset in some way.
In its response, filed on Wednesday with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the ITC said that Apple’s arguments “amount to little more than an indisputably adjudicated infringer requesting permission to continue infringing the asserted patents.
If Apple Pay is forced to enable more direct competition, Apple would remain a formidable competitor. The iPhone would still be Apple's home court with a decade head start on enrolling consumers to use Apple Pay, rather than the enrollments coming via a bank-supported mobile wallet.
"I could see issuing banks offering their own wallets, but they may lack the flexibility of a true multi-account and multi-institution wallet," Press said. "Ultimately, alternatives to Apple Pay would have to be distinctly better in terms of user experience, or offer some kind of financial advantage to users, in order to garner broad adoption."
With SwiftUI, suddenly, everthing is an animation opportunity. I have to figure out when to use them, and when not to use them in my hobby project. I long for something like the good old Inside Macintosh books that I can read.
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Thanks for reading.