Future iPhones Could Record, Fingerprints & Photos of Thieves

Apple is reportedly working on a new anti-theft measure which will record the fingerprints and snap photos of a phone-thief.

Patent filed by Apple

An application for a patent filed by Apple details this security mechanism. According to the patent, the mechanism will be incorporated in future iPhone and iPad devices. The patent details a trigger mechanism which will cause the phone to record the biometric information of whoever is using the phone at the triggered moment via the Touch ID button.

How it could work

These trigger conditions could be either when someone is trying to bypass the security of the phone or trying to gain unauthorized access to the phone via a third party device.

Information recorded by the phone can be either one or multiple fingerprints. It can also be one or more photographs of the thief, video recording of the thief, audio of the surrounding environment etc. The patent details:

The computing device may then provide the stored biometric information for identification of one or more unauthorized users

Of course, it’s not as easy as just setting up simple triggers in iOS and that’s that. There are some technical problems with implementing this system.

Problems with the system

Firstly, Touch ID requires you to press your finger several times on to the sensor for it to register it. The fingerprint sensor can only recognise a part of the fingerprint in one go. What’s more, you need to press your finger on it in multiple angles as well. The thief wouldn’t just press his finger on the home button repeatedly in an attempt to unlock the device.

This can be fixed in the future if Apple implements better fingerprint sensors and an improved Touch ID system. Next, a covert way of taking photos or recording video needs to be implemented. This won’t be much of a problem considering that there are already apps like Lookout which do that.

Legal and Privacy Issues

It also raises privacy and security concerns about the new system. If your iPhone can snap photos and record and save a thief’s fingerprints in the company’s database, it is recording yours as well. What’s there to say if the company stores your info on their servers as well?

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has used the company’s record on privacy and its stance on not storing any unencrypted information to market Apple products and services. However, limitations in these new anti-theft measures means that these features wouldn’t make it into the iPhones and other igadgets any time soon

Edward Snowden Designed IPHONE case to Detect and Block Wireless Snooping

We just cannot imagine our lives without smartphones, even for a short while, and NSA whistleblowerEdward Snowden had not owned a smartphone since 2013 when he began leaking NSA documents that exposed the government's global surveillance program.

Snowden fears that cellular signals of the smartphone could be used to locate him, but now, to combat this, he has designed an iPhone case that would detect and fight against government snooping.

With help from renowned hardware hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, Snowden has devised the design, which they refer to as an "Introspection Engine," that would keep journalists, activists, and human rights workers from being tracked by their own devices leaking their location details.

"This work aims to give journalists the tools to know when their smartphones are tracking or disclosing their location when the devices are supposed to be in airplane mode," Huang and Snowden wrote in a blog post published Thursday. "We propose to accomplish this via direct introspection of signals controlling the phone’s radio hardware."

For now, the design is aimed only at iPhone 6 models, but the duo hopes to create specifications for a large number of devices.

Snowden, together with Huang, presented on Thursday at the MIT Media Lab the design for a case-like add-on device that could modify an iPhone, allowing you to monitor various radio signals inside the phone to confirm they're not transmitting data when they’re meant to be off.

Here’s How the Introspection Engine Works:

Once built, the hardware case will be a separate minicomputer - work independent from your phone - made up entirely of open source hardware, containing its own battery and a small mono-color screen to provide a real-time status of your phone.

The case will have tiny probe wires to attach to a modified iPhone that physically wires into the phone’s antennas used by its radios, including cellular connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, through the SIM card slot.

The Introspection Engine will then be able to monitor radio transmissions and alert users to any unauthorized output signals it isn't supposed to.

In addition to alerting users, the case will even be able to shut down all radio signals on a phone to prevent governments as well as hackers from finding your location.

Since this case is designed to be independent of your phone, it would prevent your device from malware that activates radios without your knowledge.

"Malware packages, peddled by hackers at a price accessible to private individuals, can activate radios without any indication from the user interface," the duo wrote. "Trusting a phone that has been hacked to go into airplane mode is like trusting a drunk person to judge if they are sober enough to drive."

Instead, Snowden and Huang suggest the beauty of using external hardware as a shield is that it would not be affected if malware has infected your phone. "The core principle is simple: if the reporter expects radios to be off, alert the user when they are turned on," they added.

The Introspection Engine’s mission is to warn users when malware or technical glitches are causing your phone to rat out your location.

However, the hardware case is still nothing more than a design for now.

Supported by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Snowden and Huang are hoping to build a real-world prototype device over the next year in the hopes of making the case available to journalists as soon as possible.

This Case for the iPhone Runs Android

You may have seen dozens of hacks that put Google’s Android on every Apple iPhone out there (and in desperate cases, a cheap Chinese copy) but hardly any solution is as easy or convenient as the one which comes courtesy of developer Nick Lee, who has made a special case which brings Android brains to a traditionally iOS phone.

Nick Lee, who is already known for undertaking adventurous procedures such as when he made it possible to run Windows 95 on an Apple Watch, made the case so that he did not have to choose between two great platforms all the time.

The case may not win a lot of casual users because of its bulky design but that is not without reason. (You can argue that Apple itself has a case quite reminiscent to this one and that only holds a tiny battery pack.)

It contains its own SoC, which is Huawei’s Kirin 620 (no slouch), 2 GB worth RAM and 8 GB internal storage. He also made it possible to boost connectivity through options including HDMI, USB ports, Lightning port and a microSD card slot. He 3D printed these into a case along with a battery and the result is one of the coolest looking, if not the most attractive case that you have ever seen.

The version of Android which can run as a result is the version 6.0.1 Marshmallow, which appears to be running adequately if not completely smoothly. It is launched via a custom-built app courtesy of Nick Lee’s employer, Tendigi, which allows the circuitry in the board to interact with the display of the iPhone 6S.

Before he came up with this remarkable case, Lee also streamed Android on the iPhone through a microUSB cable from the Nexus 5, thanks to the Android Open Source Project to make sure that the concept worked.

Projects like these make sure that the smartphone industry remains open to all sorts of intervention from the hacking community. The project may not be very polished and certainly not practical for day-to-day use, but has a sort of sophistication that begs to be acknowledged.

Now, if only someone puts the circuitry into a transparent case and brings it out into the market that would be awesome.