“Anonymous have some big claims concerning Apple Touch ID system, claiming a connection between the technology and the US defense industry to claim it’s just another step forward for state surveillance,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“It’s possible these claims should be taken with a pinch of salt — after all, Anonymous are, by their nature, unknown, and this enables the group to make claims of this nature,” Evans writes. “In brief, the claims the group make concerning Touch ID seem to focus on Authentec director, Robert E Grady, who appears to have been a prominent figure within the George Bush administration and (Anonymous claim) was connected with The Carlyle Group, which Anonymous also claim is a majority shareholder in Booz Allen Hamilton, the NSA contractor with which whistleblower Edward Snowden worked.”
Evans writes, “That claim seems to fly against Apple’s stated promise that the fingerprints used by Touch ID are not stored in the cloud, but instead held inside a secure area hosted on the device. If these claims were correct then the implication would be that the secure area on the device is not that secure. What makes these claims so powerful is the atmosphere of mistrust that has sprung up regarding US government surveillance following the Edward Snowden revelations.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Prove it.
these guys are 2-bit hacks. what they are masters at are DOS attacks to bring websites down. nothing more. nothing but a bunch of bully-publicity seekers.
The fact that anyone can do or say anything in the groups name is their greatest strength and greatest weakness.
“In brief, the claims the group make concerning Touch ID seem to focus on Authentec director, Robert E Grady, who appears to have been a prominent figure within the George Bush administration and (Anonymous claim) was connected with The Carlyle Group, which Anonymous also claim is a majority shareholder in Booz Allen Hamilton, the NSA contractor with which whistleblower Edward Snowden worked.”
Really? This makes the Birthers, new world order conspiracy advocates, and Rothschilds haters look positively sane and reasonable. Apple is cooperating because an executive at a firm they buy technology from had business dealings with other corporations who worked for the NSA? Really? This from an organization of anonymous bullies who commit illegal acts and disrupt the internet for the sole purpose of aggrandizing themselves? How stupid does one have to be in order to give these people any credibility?
Wait for it…. They will prove it. You clearly underestimate them and maybe one day they will take you and your secrets on. 🙂
Provide concrete evidence, or it’s bullshit; such claims are worthless without it.
People said that about warrentless wiretapping, the federal government reading our email, logging our web searches, tapping into undersea fibre optic cables, listening to our phone calls and tracking our physical locations using our mobile phones.
All of that was greeted skeptically until the documents showed up (at great personal cost to Edward Snowden).
In my mind the government doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. At this point it’s prudent to assume that if it CAN be done, it IS being done.
And the only thing that can stop it is the will of the American people.
With a Islamofascist president that openly arms Al Qaeda in Syria and has Muslim Brotherhood goons on his staff…?
Apple is officially supporting and collaborating with this terrorist regime in the White House and cannot be trusted at all.
I trust Anounimous 100 times more than the lying piece of shit Kenyan scumbag that lives in there.
This is a totally non-partisan issue.
Both parties and both the Bush and Obama administrations are guilty of starting, building and hiding illegal, unconstitutional and un-American surveillance programs and activities.
This is not a right/left issue. This is about governments and federal agencies shamelessly violating the foundational principles of American democracy.
You’ve been watching too much FOX News, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. Virtually nothing you state is true, Mcman. You DO know that, don’t you?
Can you name the Muslim Brotherhood “goons” on his staff for us, please?
Didn’t think so.
I have been thinking like that for years.mso these sudden revaluations were no surprise to me. But at the same time does not con concern me that much either.
Recent revelations show that if government snooping can be done government snooping will be done. Given that NSA has the time, tools, money, expertise, and mission to snoop, well, you do the math.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Grady
The price of aluminum foil just went up.
…and some heads were inserted deeper, like yours.
Interesting considering Anonymous is part of the CIA
The competition is getting pretty desperate to take down these new phones.
I’m betting the “Anonymous” in question is from some Fandroid site owner.
My money is on a Samsung Exec
I believe that Apple stated that the bio identification is encrypted in the chips of the iOS device. If Apple were to now push out that data to the internet or even to Apple’s cloud, the lawsuits would be flying it would destroy Apple’s golden goose the iPhone 5S which will be about 33% of this next quarters income.
This is most likely Samsung FUD. Ignore it until someone can prove it.
They don’t have to transmit this fingerprint information for TouchID to be useful to the NSA.
Simply knowing that a particular transmission from a device (a call, text, email, web search, etc.) definitively came from the individual in question could be very helpful to the NSA.
Like every other cell phone. TouchID is to keep thieves from stealing your phone and reselling it. Not to stop governments from spying on us.
is “Anonymous” really Samsung ?
Horse squeeze, nice try Samsung. Must be too difficult for them to copy!
Oh this makes me laugh. “What makes these claims so powerful is the atmosphere of mistrust that has sprung up regarding US government surveillance following the Edward Snowden revelations.”
What a serious underestimation, the atmosphere of mistrust regarding the US government be it surveillance or any aspect actually precedes these revelations by a long shot.
It’s something you have to expect from a country who’s claim to fame is total disrespect for a raised white flag and the subsequent massacre of the elderly along with innocent women and children.
WTF?
What “massacre of the elderly” are you referring to???
You know many states thumb print for the Drivers license now, so many of us are already on file, get over it or burn your prints off if you’re so paranoid.
FUD
FUD is real facts with false implications.
This is actually fake FUD, with no facts and pure deception. IE: We know what Apple said. So who is anyone going to believe? Apple or Anonymous?
I really don’t know, has the “government” and NSA, actually flat out lied to us or did they “not disclose” under the premiss of national security?
I have a real problem with flat out lying.
Here’s one example of an outright lie – to the people who are SUPPOSED to be civilian oversight of these shadowy agencies. Remember, without civilian oversight, these agencies are essentially outlaws ruling over the people with no legal or moral authority. The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, directly lied to Senators questioning him about surveillance of Americans. He essentially admitted that to be the case, but said that he answered in the “most untruthful manner” that he could. He later admitted it was erroneous, as if he didn’t know that he was lying. But, due to politics, it seems like he don’t be charged with perjury, unlike other people who have lied to Congress while sworn to tell the truth.
Read this Wikipedia link for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper#False_testimony_to_Congress_on_NSA_surveillance_programs
And, this is just a really obvious, well-documented case of outright lying to the people. You really need to become more well-informed if you think the government doesn’t have an intentional policy of lying/misleading/concealing-the-truth from the people it is supposed to be serving.
My real concern is that some people believe it’s justified under the notion it’s for the common good.
Haven’t we technically been living with these issues since the dawn of civilization?
Easy to test these allegations. Faraday cage and a new iPhone 5s. In the faraday cage, establish an new account on the new phone and get your fingerprint recognized. If it works without outside connection, it’s not sending the fingerprint anywhere at initialization.
then monitor carefully as you remove it from the faraday cage and establish network communication. Does it send the fingerprint to a server somewhere else.
Simple to test.
Exactly.
If there’s proof, they can share it so others can verify.
If there’s no proof, then it’s bullshit.
Simple as that.
There is no way to test this. If the NSA has strong armed Apple, MS, Google to get the encryption keys, why would they stop at the fingerprint sensor?
The NSA can simply remotely access yeh data when they want.
This isn’t magic – it’s data transmitting from a device to a network. If it’s real, it would have to be detectable through ordinary network forensics. Even if it’s encrypted, there would have to at least be be a chunk of encrypted data big enough to fit to fingerprint scan exiting the phone at some point marked to send to an external IP address.
If there’s no way to prove this data transmission exists, then what is Anonymous even talking about? Are they saying they have a strong gut feeling about this? Are they saying a fortune teller told them about this data transmission? Did a UFO communicate to them about it through someone’s tooth filling? Did Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster inform them about this?
Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, even if you can’t prove it. But why should anyone else to believe you? When there’s nothing in the real world helping others reach the same conclusion as you, why would you except them to share the same unproven beliefs as you? When you insist on bullshit, why act surprised when others don’t take you seriously?
No need for proof. The stupid iHaters/Droid Drones will take this a FACT. Expect to see comments after comments about this.
These claims sound like BS. But, if it were true, the only way to know would be to analyze the iOS source code. Since the finger print map is static, there are ways the data could be “sneaked” off the phone. For example, in tiny pieces embedded within normal phone-to-server communication that would be extremely difficult to detect. Like iMessages or iCloud syncing. Imagine that a tiny piece of the finger print hash was embedded within within multiple legitimately occurring encrypted communications with external servers, along with some type of sequencing key. Kind of like a piggy backing embedded bit torrent.
Anyway, it would be possible, and very difficult to detect, even if highly unlikely that Apple is being nefarious on the government’s behalf. And Apple knows that if it were detected (and it would be possible to detect, even if extremely well hidden, especially with all the hackers’ eyes on Apple) and brought to light, the repercussions on Apple would be very bad indeed. Not least of which would be the consumer impression and trust of Apple since they explicitly said this data was secure and would never leave the phone. So, yeah, this is next to completely implausible.
Gotta love all the Astroturfing going on above – you guys are to be commended for being so quick and on top of this story. It will certainly go along way toward easing the fears of the fence sitters and undecideds. Good job.
As for the rest of us though, we take this kind of thing a little more seriously. A bunch of snarky comments, on a topic as important as this one, are like rain drops on a duck to anyone paying attention.
Apple under Cook has been a consistent force for cooperation with the two national governments that make wide-scale domestic spying a priority; the US & the PRC. Apple is about to get huge in China, precisely because they caved to the government’s demands to make their iDevices more ‘available’ to their inquiries. These are the same devices that will now be ubiquitously equipped with TouchID. You can’t square that circle if you believe that TouchID can’t be accessed by the government – any government – that Apple has negotiated with.
It’s possible Anonymous is wrong. It is possible Apple has made modifications to the technology they purchased that makes it impossible for the PRC or the US intelligence services to access it. It is possible that some day the ghost of Steve will return to clarify all of this, one way or the other.
None of those things are likely. Protect yourselves in the meantime.
I’m a certified Jobs-worshipping Apple loyalist, and I think what you’ve said here is exactly right.
I trust Apple, but we can’t trust the governments they must work under. Sadly these days that includes the US as much as it includes China.
(Perhaps Jobs had a public profile and a counter-culture unpredictability such that he could keep these forces at bay.)
The American government has trampled the constitution, and the democratic process. They have violated the people’s trust and the will of the founding fathers. And it seems they were willing to jeopardize the American technology sector along the way.
“My voice is my passport. Verify me.”
“Too many secrets” = “SETEC Astronomy” 🙂
Hold on to your folio hats, here we go again!
Poppycock!
“Fingerprint data encrypted and is never available to other software, never available to Apple and never available to iCloud…”
Apple has earned it’s trust, it’s long standing track record since 1984 is all the proof we need.
Anonymous cowards are never trusted and they have no credibility whatsoever.
Yes please do prove it! I would be very sad to hear this…
That being said, what on earth is the US gov’t going to do with my finger print that they cant already do with the one they’ve got?
OH NO! Obama knows which single I just bought on iTunes! TRAGEDY
TRAGEDY…..When the Feeling’s gone and you can’t go on….it’s a TRAGEDY….
Indeed!!!
Let’s have some logic. IF the government wants to track who you are saying or doing, there are many methods vastly more effective than having your fingerprint!
who. cares.
I’m not worried ( What Me Worry)
The government already has my prints but not my DNA
Besides-I thought that the government just declared bankruptcy
What has made Americans become so paranoid? It cannot just be the revelations about the NSA. The characteristic of paranoid conspiracy theorists is that they can never be satisfied. Imagine a life of perpetual frustration and fear. Yuck!
The USA paranoia is, in large part, a political manipulation invention. It’s ages old. It’s the core of propaganda.
It’s also lazy as hell. In our modern world of superior psychology we know full well that the BEST way to manipulate others is the positive reinforcement, that is, benefitting the unwitting victim with pleasure. Bashing the victim and turning on their STRESS is far less successful, and inspires that wonderful cure for propaganda: RETRIBUTION.
And yes folks, we have some INCREDIBLE retribution coming down the pipe in the USA for decades of sheer, deceitful, vicious, murderous citizen manipulation / negative reinforcement by our politico. It’s going to be historically ugly. Turn your eyes away and pretend it’s not happening. You’ll feel better. 😯
I have no doubt that the NSA has backdoors engineered into every operating system and they can access my computer at will. It isn’t like Apple has a choice in the matter. They have to do whatever the NSA demands and then lie to us about it, as the NSA demands. Remember, our representatives in Congress GAVE them this power. Again and again. So what is the point of complaining about it?
For shame Anonymous. You just did a FACE PLANT.
Stick to facts and win. Go all conspiracy theorist and lose.
This is just funny how anything regarding security ends up being connected to US Government…
Be happy to be connected to US Government as you can still make it better… I feel for those who’s security is connected to governments such as Iran, Cuba, Israel, etc… those guys are in the worse position.