iPhones have been exposing MAC addresses despite Apple’s promises otherwise
iPhones have been exposing MAC addresses despite Apple’s promises otherwise
arstechnica.com
iPhones have been exposing your unique MAC despite Apple’s promises otherwise
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Three years ago, Apple introduced a privacy-enhancing feature that hid the Wi-Fi address of iPhones and iPads when they joined a network.
Enter CreepyDOL, a low-cost, distributed network of Wi-Fi sensors that stalks people as they move about neighborhoods or even entire cities.
In 2020, Apple released iOS 14 with a feature that, by default, hid Wi-Fi MACs when devices connected to a network.
Over time, Apple has enhanced the feature, for instance, by allowing users to assign a new private Wi-Fi address for a given SSID.
In fairness to Apple, the feature wasn't useless, because it did prevent passive sniffing by devices such as the above-referended CreepyDOL.
But the failure to remove the real MAC from the port 5353/UDP still meant that anyone connected to a network could pull the unique identifier with no trouble.
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