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To: Blue Highway
You poo poo the lack of security of SD cards for some reason but then mention about iCloud a proven security risk. You have a certain conundrum there Sword.

Excuse me, TRUTH MATTERS, and no one has ever shown that iCloud is a "security risk," only that a few celebrities used either very weak passwords, or security questions. No one has hacked into iCloud.

No one has ever used any "iBrute" or "iDict" script solution to break into any Apple account except their own. . . and that only because they put their own password into the dictionary they were using fairly close to the beginning of the passwords to be checked. Those are facts.

The celebrities accounts were compromised—not hacked—because the celebrities used truthful answers to commonly asked questions for which the answer would be hard to find for average citizens, but for celebrities are easy to learn by basic and simple research into fan magazine biographies. For example a question often asked may be "What was the name of the street where the elementary school you attended was on?" For Joe Schmo, hard to find out. For a celebrity, read a fanzine bio, learn what school she attended, do a bit of research in an old phone book, and "Ta da!" the pervert has the answer. Another question might be "What was your favorite pet when you were growing up?" Again, a search of a fanzine biography is likely to provide the answer.

However, it turns out that many of the 150 - 200 celebrities "accounts" supposedly compromised from iCloud, did not come from iCloud at all. Some did not have iCloud accounts. Many of the photos—about 55%— had metadata that showed the photos came from Android, Windows web cams, and even Flickr accounts, sources highly unlikely to uploaded to iCloud from an Apple device. Forensic investigators determined the photos the photos, some which were years old, came from collections that had been amassed by a community of perverts whose hobby was breaking into celebrities' computers, accounts in many venues, and trading what they find. . . and getting in by what ever means they could, including befriending the celebrity! This was confirmed by some members of that community who had been trading the photos. . . and had actually been the ones who had acquired some of the photos. The person trying to sell the photos was breaking their code of secrecy and trying to sell outside the "community." He had been peddling his collection for TWO WEEKS before the release of the so-called "iBrute" iCloud dictionary attack. . . and announced THAT was how he got the pictures. . . and suddenly got the attention he had been trying to get for his collection. He LIED!

Dictionary attacks such as "iBrute" and "iDict" cannot work on the complex Apple ID's that Apple requires its members to use. Apple requires hard passwords, using both upper and lower case letters, mixed with numbers, and keyboard symbols. NO dictionary would be able to have those combinations in them in a reasonable time frame. Pr0x13, the author of "iDict" used a dictionary of 500 common passwords. . . and only 18 of them would have met Apple's strict criteria. The ONLY way that Pr0x13 got his system to work, and for his buddies to get it to work on THEIR accounts was to put their own passwords into the list. In fact, among the 500 obvious common passwords, there are TWO that are obviously not members of that list—and are easily spotted as they simply don't belong to the same set—I think they are Pr0x13's and one of his friend's passwords to iCloud, LOL!.

ANY THING uploaded to iCloud is encrypted to 256 AES encryption using the users Apple ID entangled with the 128 bit UUID of the device. Depending on the complexity of the User ID, that can be an extremely complex passcode. Apple then anonymizes the data, splits it into four pieces, combines it with other data from other users, and AGAIN encrypts it to 256 bit AES encryption on TOP of your encryption. If anyone breaks in and downloads any of that data, ALL they are going to get is gobbledegook. . . totally useless garbage.

On the other hand, that stupid SD card uses standard Windows formatting. . . with ZERO encryption, no user protection.

How Android lost its SD Card storage

Now Android fans are probably already thinking, "well with an Android device, I can add an SD Card for more storage!" In fact, that's what Samsung itself recommended Galaxy S4 users do in early 2013 to make up for the fact that Android and bundled apps were wasting nearly half the available advertised storage.

However, SD Cards don't work like built-in storage; they're more like a floppy drive. They offer no security because they use Microsoft's FAT file system, which does not support file or user permissions, enabling any rogue app to read and steal personal data and making it far more difficult for end users or enterprises to secure their devices.

SD Card's lack of file and user account security—along with the related problems of potentially removable storage in a mobile device (there are many)—prompted Apple to never rely upon SD Cards for memory expansion on its iPods and iOS devices, even though it did make it possible to use external SD Cards with iPods, Macs and iOS devices via USB.

Google initially supported internal SD Card slots to help make Android devices cheaper, but the security and usability issues finally prompted Google to remove SD Card support in its 2013 release of Android 4.4 KitKat.

After installing KitKat, Android users found that their SD Cards no longer work, or can only be used in very specific ways, not as general purpose storage for things like apps and the user's photo library. Users who bought a Galaxy S4 and took Samsung's advice to make up for lost storage via SD Cards were subsequently left SD-out of luck.

Remember, this isn't about Google issuing an update that retroactively erased a primary marketing bullet point of Android; this is a lawsuit claiming that Apple was defrauding customers by giving them significantly more free storage compared to Samsung. Not one of the reports linked above even mentioned that fact. — Source: "Despite lawsuit, Apple's iOS 8 storage is actually far more efficient than Google's Android, Samsung's Galaxy, Microsoft Windows", Daniel Erin Dilger, Apple Insider, 01/04/2015


51 posted on 01/13/2015 12:52:18 PM PST by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users contnue...)
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To: Swordmaker

Again not sure what you’re talking about I have the Galaxy S5 and Kitkat 4.4.4 and my SD card works as expected and works pretty damn fast not like a floppy at all. Buy a fast micro SD card and it’s not slow like you are purporting. Hell, I can take burst shots with my camera in the S5, (Does the Apple even offer burst shots on it’s inferior camera?) and the SD card has no trouble keeping up. Try again with the Apple delusion...


54 posted on 01/13/2015 6:56:51 PM PST by Blue Highway
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