Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like there are two hashes. A short one based on the iCloud account’s email address or phone number, and a long 2048-bit RSA identity that gets stored on the device after logging into iCloud.
It looks like the short identity is basically just used for that initial airdrop screen where you find available targets to airdrop to, but the actual longer, more secure, hash is required for the actual file transfer.
That might explain why finding airdrop contacts is kind of snappy, but there is a bit of a delay after you initiate a transfer.
Edit: one more thought. If this really was that easy to crack, wouldn’t China have done this years ago? The CCP has been targeting Airdrop for a long long time.
Sounds about right. Might be they have some man in the middle shenannigans going on with permanently installed hardware in the subway, but I doubt it. That would be a race condition that you might win with a lot more signal strength, but still…
Apple disabled AirDrop in the China region, then later globally, for people not in your contacts.
In November 2022, […] Apple began to limit AirDrop sharing with non-contacts for devices in China, which made it harder for users to share files with people they didn’t know. That feature was later expanded globally.
Correct, reviving files from everyone is now only open for 10 min. It was launched in China to appease the CCP, but in western nations where using airdrop to voice government dissent isn’t popular, it was released to stop people from airdropping dick pics on the subway.
I haven’t read anything about cracking the data itself though, just being able to identify the phone number of a sender. The infos they give is just too vague at this point.
AirDrop has been used in China by pro-democracy activists to spread their message relatively safely (as you can’t get away with that using the internet). Apple has already made AirDrop useless for that purpose in a recent update, but I guess China is still working on cracking down on it.
You can still use airdrop to send shit to people about how much the CCP sucks. Airdropping to non-contacts still exists, but when you enable receiving from any rando, that door only remains open for 10 minutes, then you have to open it again.
I guess the question is, do Chinese people keep tapping “everyone for 10 minutes” multiple times in certain public places?
That’s what I meant as it being useless now for that purpose. Unless there’s designated dissent areas or times, that strategy just won’t work any more (and if you have to be ‘in the know’ to enable it, you’re not recruiting/convincing any new people).
Or they tasked a team with cracking it, they finally got a result and decided to announce it regardless, even if it is moot because the economic pressure on Apple worked.
Hot take - I’ll wager China is publicly announcing this so Chinese citizens stop trusting Airdrop. Intelligence organizations usually like to keep uncovered vulnerabilities private so they don’t get patched. And if there is a vulnerability, Apple will 100% patch that shit.
By sowing doubt in AirDrop’s security, that might be enough to get Chinese citizens to stop using it. And if enough people stop sharing or receiving, then that is going to kneecap it as a channel for dissent.