Universal Parks & Resorts | Solution Architect | Orlando, FL or Remote (USA only) | Full Time
Universal Parks & Resorts is a global theme park company, with parks in Orlando, LA, Osaka and Beijing. My team is responsible for the software architecture for our digital and enterprise tooling. Includes web/mobile/service etc.
If interested use the email in my profile to get in touch.
> All wireless devices have small manufacturing imperfections in the hardware that are unique to each device. These fingerprints are an accidental byproduct of the manufacturing process. These imperfections in Bluetooth hardware result in unique distortions, which can be used as a fingerprint to track a specific device.
>For Bluetooth, this would allow an attacker to circumvent anti-tracking techniques such as constantly changing the address a mobile device uses to connect to Internet networks.
It's like sci fi movies where they track ships based on their engines. Turn off your transponder and they still know who you are, unless you really try to camouflage yourself.
Address randomization helps but it's not enough. The phone still transmits at a regular cadence so it's pretty easy to figure out which old address has changed into which new address and keep tracking the same device.
By tracking all devices, noting when one address disappears and a new one appears, and correlating it with the perceived signal strength to reasonably guess whether this is the same device vs. a new one entering your detection radius. On top of that, there is often a fair amount of information besides the address in the contents of the advertisement packet, the set of services this device implements, battery level, manufacturer data fields, ... - much like browser fingerprinting by checking for fonts and canvas edge cases.
Maybe not easy, but also not hard. The only thing that screws you up is someone playing with the airplane mode toggle of their phone while moving within your detection radius.
It's not just that the software has gone years without updates, but also if there have been no or very few downloads. Reading the actual update from Apple: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=gi6npkmf it states specifically "minimal download threshold — meaning the app has not been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period "
I have many problems with this definition, especially that they haven't explained what counts as "download". Are re-installations counted as downloads? Plus, what is the threshold of "very few"? What if the application is geographically specific that it isn't downloaded very often (usually government or local apps), but isn't qualified for enterprise distribution? Unless Apple has expounded on what counts as "download" and give even an approximate count of what they consider as "very few", that caveat basically excludes approximately no non-updated apps.
Limited number, Extremely Small Number, very small number, a very small percentage. Those are all direct quotes of standard Apple PR language used when announcing recalls for
iphone 5 battery
iphone 6 battery/throttling
iPhone 12 sound
MacBook, Air Pro keyboards
etc etc. Its always minimal threshold, extremely small number, very small percentage, even when they recall 50% of released products (keyboards).
Honestly, this sounds like a black hole of never working out in your favor. Their standard practices are very ambiguous and it often depends on the staff member. There is little consistency. I wouldn't expect this new exception to be any different. If you're hoping for an exception you're already fighting Apple's way of doing it.
The only reason I can think that you could be getting downvotes for this, is that you left out the bit about them also being weeks late with the "news". As usual.
For your #1 point our team has had great success using PlantUML for our diagrams. They can be easily output for slides or wiki pages, but it's all written in code so we can keep them in our git repo for tracking.
Two of the teams I worked on supported a couple thousand devs each. So going in I thought it would be everyone using specialized diagramming tools. But the majority did not. I don't do much architecture these days, but I've bookmarked PlantUML just in case and will check it out if the need arises.
Working at a theme park doing technology work, it allows for free access to the theme park (significant other included) and other theme parks in the area. Deep discounts are provided on merchandise and hotels in the area.
