> To date, no HN discussion of this crypto-pairing of the phone to its parts has revealed an alternative solution that would be effective at Apple’s scale for preventing phones from being hacked by a parts swap while also allowing any part to be swapped in
Random-ass repair shops are not going to expend the effort of putting in fake parts to hack you to.. hack a couple of thousand dollars off of your account and then get caught due to it easily being traceable to the repair shop?
The only people who need protection from hardware-swap hacks are people like journalists. And if you are one, you shouldn’t be giving people physical access to your device regardless.
Here is a simple solution: give the normal user (after a passcode unlock) a pop-up: ‘your X has been replaced. Do you wish to authorize this new part for use with your iPhone?’.
Make it so that if your phone is set to the new Lockdown mode, you cannot authorize any new parts.
Random-ass repair shops are not going to expend the effort of putting in fake parts to hack you to.. hack a couple of thousand dollars off of your account and then get caught due to it easily being traceable to the repair shop?
The only people who need protection from hardware-swap hacks are people like journalists. And if you are one, you shouldn’t be giving people physical access to your device regardless.
Here is a simple solution: give the normal user (after a passcode unlock) a pop-up: ‘your X has been replaced. Do you wish to authorize this new part for use with your iPhone?’.
Make it so that if your phone is set to the new Lockdown mode, you cannot authorize any new parts.