You Won't Believe What My iPhone Did in the Car This Morning

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | April 17, 2012 | Rush Limbaugh

[mnehring]

Sounded like a prank or a hack.

[Gay State Conservative]

I heard what he had to say but understood little of it...I'm pretty clueless when it comes to technology.I think I'll read this later and see if I can grasp it.

[skinkinthegrass]

bm

[SpinnerWebb]

I’m surprised you didn’t post your Democratic Underground episode!

[McGruff]

Rush is losing it. He's so tied up in the high tech Matrix that he's a part of it. Go back to Kansas Rush. Go back to a real radio station. Get your head back on straight. We need you.

[null and void]

"Obama's minions are taking over and there's nothing you can do about it,"

What came back to me the second time was totally unrelated to anything I had said. It was talking about wind power and Obama and, "You don't have a chance."

It sounds like Rush's iPhone is channeling some of the posters on FR...

[Red Badger]

Somebody has targeted Rush personally for hacking. Bluetooth, or whatever, they have gotten his phone hacked, by whatever means. They were jerking his chain, just to prove they could do it. Not only is this illegal, but dangerous. That means anybody’s iPhone/Bluetooth/WiFi setup can be hacked.

I’m betting that ‘Anonymous’ or ‘Occupy’ or some other Left-wing whacko group is responsible.

Remember some teenager son of a Dem lawmaker in Tennessee hacked Sarah Palin’s e-Mails.................

[Menehune56]

Love Rush but I’m skeptical of unreproducible tech problems that could actually be practical jokes.

[CT Hillbilly]

My former boss’ iphone/email was hacked a couple of months ago; still getting weird emails from “him”...I won’t click on the links in the email, BUT I did get 2 this morning and I haven’t gotten one in a few weeks...hmmmmm....

[texanred]

I have a setup similar to what he describes. I had a similar error at one time - although different content. The system muted but when I tried to speak to it I would get bizarre text. After a few more tries I found out that although I was hitting the mic button it was taking the supposedly muted input from the Bluetooth and attempting to transcribe that. I eventually spotted the “gibberish” as morning DJ chatter.

I imagine Rush listens to political chatter rather than some inane “Morning Zoo” since he’s not trying to get info about Houston traffic.

[Kaslin]

There are many that hate Rush and wish him harm. so it is quite possible, who knows

[Keith in Iowa]

Your’s is a plausible take on this bit of oddity.

[BreitbartSentMe]

Pinging Swordmaker

[sportutegrl]

I’m surprised that the iphone doesn’t have an internal speech recognition app. Android has an internal speech recongition software and there are apps that convert to text. Why would you need to go through the upload/download rigamarole to an apple server somewhere else? My first theory is that there was crosstalk, that is he got someone else’s transcribed data back. It is impossible for bluetooth to be hacked in a car, since it only works for short distances. Another theory is that the radio didn’t turn off.

[Churchillspirit]

Can’t reply on anything being “hack” proof....my tagline here was changed yesterday and not by me.

[Churchillspirit]

Can’t rely on anything being “hack” proof....my tagline here was changed yesterday and not by me.

[jboot]

It would be easy for someone at Apple to mess with Rush. Nothing you do with your iPhone is private: you are operating in Apple's walled garden and they can DEFINITELY monitor you, and interact with you, if they choose to. They can secretly install or uninstall apps. (Did anyone else have an iPhone wardriving app? You don't anymore, courtesy of Apple.) They can even remotely brick your hardware. And there is nothing that you can do about it.

Rush should perhaps be less keen on Apple. They aren't exactly friendly to conservatives, and with the re-immaculation of 0bama in doubt someone within the walls of Apple may be emboldened to try something desparate. I can imagine a scenario where a lot of show prep vanishes during a critical news cycle.

[Red Badger]

Another theory is that someone at Apple’s server group has been playing around and found Rush’s account links. Then they just intercepted the transmission and sent pre-written replies when he next logged on to use the system.........

[Myrddin]

The Bluetooth has a wireless MAC ID. So does the WiFi and phone. It's dirt simple to sniff that stuff over the air. The easiest link to attack would be the auto Bluetooth to iPhone path. Simply inject the words he saw into the audio path towards the iPhone. It would go all the way through to the Apple server and get returned as text. It's simply not that hard. The most difficult part would be shadowing the moving car while doing it. Alternatively, hacking the Verizon LTE/WiFi device to do a "man in the middle attack" using the built-in web server (for configuration) is another avenue of attack. I own one of those, so I'm somewhat aware of ways to attack the beast.

It certainly sounds like someone has decided to hack Rush's toys to unnerve him.