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Apple’s Internal Networks Were Hacked for Three Months

Andrew Orr ·

But don’t worry, they were hacked by good guys working under Apple’s bug bounty program. Sam Curry, Brett Buerhaus, Ben Sadeghipour, Samual Erb, and Tanner Barnes found a total of 55 vulnerabilities.

During our engagement, we found a variety of vulnerabilities in core portions of their infrastructure that would’ve allowed an attacker to fully compromise both customer and employee applications, launch a worm capable of automatically taking over a victim’s iCloud account, retrieve source code for internal Apple projects, fully compromise an industrial control warehouse software used by Apple, and take over the sessions of Apple employees with the capability of accessing management tools and sensitive resources.

When I first saw the news I was aghast to learn that Apple only paid them US$55,000, but the blog post was updated to add that the team so far has gotten 32 payments totaling US$288,500. Still doesn’t seem enough to me. Apple needs to work on its internal security.

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Apple Maps ‘Look Around’ Feature Now Available in Phoenix, Arizona

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple Maps feature ‘Look Around’  is now available in Phoenix, Arizona. Macrumors spotted the update, which recently arrived in cities in the UK and Ireland.

Apple recently expanded its “Look Around” feature in Apple Maps to Phoenix, Arizona, providing 3D street-level imagery that’s similar to Google’s Street View. Apple has been slowly adding the Look Around feature to new cities. It expanded to Chicago in April and several cities in Japan in August. Though not yet mentioned on Apple’s website, Look Around last week expanded to London, Dublin, and Edinburgh.

Cool Stuff Found

Here’s the Official Trailer for ‘Wolfwalkers’ on Apple TV+

Andrew Orr ·

Apple shared an official trailer for “Wolfwalkers” an animated film about the last wolves of Ireland. In a time of superstition and magic, a young apprentice hunter, Robyn Goodfellowe, journeys to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last wolf pack. While exploring the forbidden lands outside the city walls, Robyn befriends a free-spirited girl, Mebh, a member of a mysterious tribe rumored to have the ability to transform into wolves by night. As they search for Mebh’s missing mother, Robyn uncovers a secret that draws her further into the enchanted world of the WOLFWALKERS and risks turning into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy. It arrives December 11.

Cool Stuff Found

‘Dickinson’ Season 2 Premieres on Apple TV+ January 8

Andrew Orr ·

Apple has announced “Dickinson” season 2 on its YouTube channel and it will premiere on Apple TV+ January 8, 2021. The series also scored an early renewal for a third season. Dickinson is a half-hour comedy series starring Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld. Dickinson audaciously explores the constraints of society, gender, and family from the perspective of rebellious young poet Emily Dickinson. Created, written, and executive produced by Alena Smith and executive produced by Hailee Steinfeld, “Dickinson” stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jane Krakowski, Toby Huss, Anna Baryshnikov, Ella Hunt, and Adrian Blake Enscoe. Wiz Khalifa guest stars.

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TMO Team on 'Let's Talk Apple Podcast'

Charlotte Henry ·

TMO UK Associate Editor Charlotte Henry and Daily Observations presenter Kelly Guimont joined Bart Busschots on his Let’s Talk Apple podcast. Along with Nick Riley from the Essential Apple Podcast, they discussed some of the biggest topics from the Apple world in the month of September. This included the latest App-Store-related developments, the ‘Time Flies’ event, and the release of various new operating systems including iOS 14 and watchOS 7.

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Privacy Advocates Call on Tim Cook to to Implement iOS 14 Privacy Features

Andrew Orr ·

Ranking Digital Rights, along with seven other organizations, sent a letter [PDF] to Apple CEO Tim Cook, urging the company to implement iOS 14 privacy features that are delayed until 2021.

Apple has the opportunity to reinforce its position as an industry leader on protecting the privacy of its users by empowering them to control who can track their online behavior. At the same time, this change can and should enable the company to become more transparent about how it enforces its terms against apps that violate its policies. By delaying the introduction of crucial privacy measures, the company is slowing the momentum it created.

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Apple Wants to Store Your ID Digitally. What Could Go Wrong?

Andrew Orr ·

William Gallagher writes how Apple is working on methods to store your ID digitally in Wallet, like credit cards. But I found this part concerning:

This all presumes that we are able to present our ID. There are situations, such as when we’re incapacitated, when we need to be identified yet we cannot personally do anything about that. In this case, Apple proposes that under the right circumstances, our devices could “automatically transmit the user’s identity credential.”

Apple gives the example of a first responder, “such as police officer, firefighter, etc,” who could legitimately possess a device that would automatically request ID like this.

I bet law enforcement would love a Stingray-like device that can automatically harvest IDs when they walk through a protest.

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Apple Podcasts Available on Amazon Echo and Fire TV Devices in Germany

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple Podcasts is now available on Amazon Echo and Fire TV devices in Germany like they are in the U.S, AppleInsider reported. The service can be set as the default via a skill. I very much hope this comes to other European countries, including the UK! At the moment, in these other countries, you can access podcasts on an Alexa device via TuneIn.

Amazon Echo devices need to have an Alexa skill installed to access the library. This is the same setup as it is in the United States. Once set up, users can ask Alexa to play a podcast, and then also have more specific controls such as pausing, or skipping back and forth through episodes. In the Amazon Alexa app on iOS, users need to first add a skill called Apple Podcasts.

Cool Stuff Found

App Store Connect 1.5 Update Brings New Icon, TestFlight

Andrew Orr ·

The App Store Connect 1.5 update brings a new icon that uses design language from macOS Big Sur. It also lets developers set up internal TestFlight beta testing and more. Release Notes: Add up to 100 members of your team to test beta builds of your app; edit test details for beta builds, view build activity and status, and expire builds; answer required export compliance questions; remove internal testers.

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A Birthday Present From Instagram - New Anti-Bullying Features

Charlotte Henry ·

Tuesday was Instagram’s 10-year birthday. To mark the occasion, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform announced new anti-bullying features on its official blog.

In the last few days, we started testing a new feature that automatically hides comments similar to others that have been reported. We know from research that, while people don’t want to be exposed to negative comments, they want more transparency into the types of comments that are hidden. You can tap “View Hidden Comments” to see the comments. Comments that violate our Community Guidelines will continue to be automatically removed. We’re also expanding comment warning to include an additional warning when people repeatedly attempt to post potentially offensive comments. Since launching comment warning, we saw that reminding people of the consequences of bullying on Instagram and providing real-time feedback as they are writing the comment is the most effective way to shift behavior. These new warnings let people take a moment to step back and reflect on their words and lay out the potential consequences should they proceed. We just started testing this feature in select languages.