Travis
Ars TechnicaiPhone privacy feature hiding Wi-Fi MACs has failed to work for 3 years
“From the get-go, this feature was useless,” researcher says of feature put into iOS 14.
ADHDel-DRAFT-v10-final (2).doc@arstechnica But it’s fixed now. Worth putting that in the headline
monorail times@arstechnica honestly all this did was make it confusing which of my devices is hooked up to my network, I turn it off on my home WiFi
Chad@monorailtimes @arstechnica Not sure if your home network was the intended environment for the feature.
Leo 💪🏼@monorailtimes @arstechnica same here. This is just an annoyance.
Ragashingo@arstechnica The quote about the feature being useless seems pretty extreme... and wrong.
If I understand correctly, it DID successfully rotate the MAC and make it very difficult to track iPhones walking past a store, for instance. It's only when an iPhone CONNECTS TO a network that it would inadvertently send its original MAC.
I always thought the main point of the feature was to limit the ability to track users as they walked around in public, so it seems pretty successful, actually.
Jean-Pierre Höhmann@Ragashingo @arstechnica Yes and no. The usage of random MACs while scanning and not connected to a network is a separate feature that already existed beforehand. This new feature was specifically about pseudonymizing the MAC when connected, so it is fair to say that the feature was basically useless.
@Ragashingo @arstechnica Then again, they got that wrong in their own article, so… 🤦♀️
Adam Katz@arstechnica I remember being confused the first time I looked at my router's logs after migrating from an iPhone to @GrapheneOS. I was concerned with all of the devices that had recently been connected until I realized it was randomizing my MAC address.
I then went into the config and changed it to use a dedicated MAC for that wifi network.
GrapheneOS@adamhotep @arstechnica GrapheneOS uses a per-connection random MAC address by default instead of a per-network random address like Android and iOS. When doing that, it also uses clean DHCP state for each connection.
Can set it to use a per-network address for your own network if you prefer but routers should be able to handle having tons of devices connecting and obtaining new IP addresses. Per-network is supported mainly for people who need to work around misguided MAC-based access control.
@GrapheneOS
I like it from a simplified auditing perspective and because I can open ports for forwarding, but only with a consistent LAN IP (admittedly less useful for a phone than for a laptop)
I like it from a simplified auditing perspective and because I can open ports for forwarding, but only with a consistent LAN IP (admittedly less useful for a phone than for a laptop)
@adamhotep It's trivial to spoof MAC addresses of other devices using a network which is why MAC filtering, etc. doesn't work. You can see the MAC addresses being used over the air.
@GrapheneOS
True but less important when the thing you're forwarding is key-based like SSH. I'm not talking about MAC filtering, I'm talking about consistent IP addresses.
True but less important when the thing you're forwarding is key-based like SSH. I'm not talking about MAC filtering, I'm talking about consistent IP addresses.
Brad H@arstechnica Apple headline syndrome at work here.
From the article: “In fairness to Apple, the feature wasn't useless”
Jai@arstechnica can’t be that useless. It has helped kids get around Disney Circle restrictions easily 😡