How to destroy an iPhone
February 12, 2016 3:35 PM   Subscribe

How to brick an iPhone: Set the date to January 1, 1970.

Don't do this! There's a video at the link showing what happens.
posted by Chocolate Pickle (139 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
DO I SMELL A CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT A-BREWING
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:39 PM on February 12, 2016


Well, once again apple has simplified the process!
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:40 PM on February 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


No.
posted by books for weapons at 3:41 PM on February 12, 2016


Boom.
posted by grahamparks at 3:42 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't know why all you people are having problems, I mean I use my iOS device every day and the only times it goes awry are when I say something negative about Appl--├┬┴┬┴┤
posted by JHarris at 3:42 PM on February 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Well you shouldn't try to fucking cheat at Fallout Vault.
posted by Talez at 3:46 PM on February 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Cognoscenti will recognize that date as being "The Epoch".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:46 PM on February 12, 2016 [16 favorites]


(No I don't actually think Apple censors when people say bad things about them. Honestly, I just wanted to say ├┬┴┬┴┤)
posted by JHarris at 3:46 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, what else do you expect when you attempt to time travel?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:47 PM on February 12, 2016


So uh, can I use this to swap colors? I'm tired of space gray on my year old iPhone and there's like, a tiny scratch at the top of my screen too. How about a free switch to white and gold? I don't have AppleCare but like, this is such a design flaw.
posted by oceanjesse at 3:47 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Like for like. You can't change colors.
posted by Talez at 3:48 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is the known Unix Epoch, and is alluded to in the Reddit thread. This is a rather nasty issue considering an embedded 64-bit processor and a 64-bit kernel...

All things considering... 64-bit CPU's and 64-bit OS kernel images on a modern "phone" kind of throws my head for a spin...
posted by PROD_TPSL at 3:53 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


MoonOrb, there's a meme going around doing that exact thing.
posted by JHarris at 3:54 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I tried this once and when I did, Biff ended up running the world.
posted by 4ster at 3:54 PM on February 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


Why is this even possible? We made PCs for decades that were basically impossible to brick short of flashing the BIOS with garbage, which was nearly impossible to do except deliberately. Computers (and phone are computers these days) should always have some sort of master override to fix a broken OS. Why are consumer devices so badly designed?
posted by Mitrovarr at 3:55 PM on February 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


It's unfortunate that Jan 1, 1970 has been caught in the crossfire. J-FIRST has served me well over the years, allowing me to sign up for countless user accounts with minimal friction.

Thank you for your service, J-FIRST.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:55 PM on February 12, 2016 [10 favorites]


Can I use this trick to go back in time and kill my own Newton?
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:57 PM on February 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


Why is this even possible? We made PCs for decades that were basically impossible to brick short of flashing the BIOS with garbage, which was nearly impossible to do except deliberately. Computers (ahnd phone are computers these days) should always have some sort of master override to fix a broken OS. Why are consumer devices so badly designed?

Someone here has never been asked a timezone question in a technical interview! It's unbelievable easy to screw up anything to do with timezones.
posted by Talez at 3:58 PM on February 12, 2016 [12 favorites]




To Apple, destroying your phone is a perfectly viable option if they detect that there's something they don't like - whether it's having it maintained by a non-Apple technician, or switching the date to some value it doesn't expect.

There should be nothing - nothing at all - you can do to "brick" your phone by mistake. For the small number of people who need secure data, bricking the phone doesn't guarantee that your data can't be read by even a moderately sophisticated hacker, and there are better ways to secure your data than "rendering the phone inoperative".

As I said before on this thread, I have no idea why people accept this behavior on this premium product, but there's no accounting for tastes.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:00 PM on February 12, 2016 [19 favorites]


LY, I don't think this is anything Apple did deliberately. I think it's just a royally bad bug.

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:01 PM on February 12, 2016 [10 favorites]


Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

Or any program logic to do with timezones.
posted by Talez at 4:04 PM on February 12, 2016 [14 favorites]


Serious question here. Why would there even be an option to set your phone back any further than say, the year it was manufactured?
posted by Splunge at 4:13 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Why are consumer devices so badly designed?

They're not. The priorities have changed.

The major vendors (Apple, Google, and now Samsung) have become attuned to the stench of money, and now understand that the really big stink has been wafting off of transaction processors. That's why you have Apple Pay, and Google Wallet (now Google Pay), and Samsung Pay. It's the endgame in terms of monetizing their platforms.

The problem is that phone pay is not really much more convenient than plastic, and if it's going to work consumers and vendors have to have complete faith that the system is entirely secure. And that's why you're seeing all this locked-down shit. The amount of brand damage Apple takes from bricking a bunch of phones is nothing compared to someone getting their bank account drained via a compromised phone.

So the priority is to make the device more difficult to compromise. They'd rather it failed to brick than failed to open. It's a completely rational story for the vendors to tell themselves, but it just so happens to mean that you can't actually own your own device anymore.

At least that's my theory, and I'm sticking with it for now. :P
posted by phooky at 4:13 PM on February 12, 2016 [23 favorites]


> LY, I don't think this is anything Apple did deliberately. I think it's just a royally bad bug.

We know there paths in which the operating system deliberately bricks itself, yes?

So at the least, this has to make it harder for them to write any "anti-bricking" recovery attempt. They can't just be scanning for inconsistencies and recovering...

Overall, we know that they aren't saying, "Keeping your phone working at all times trumps all other priorities." There is at least some consistency checking that's going on, and if that fails, the phone is deliberately bricked. It's hard to believe that this doesn't introduced additional risk to the whole process...

The "when was the last time you bricked your desktop?" argument is fairly convincing, too.

EDIT: or what phooky said...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:13 PM on February 12, 2016


I'm pretty sure this is a "secret bug" that was accidentally found but that was actually meant as a convenient tool for spies about to be discovered to "accidentally" brick their phone so that any secret data collected on the phone cannot be recovered by the authorities.

Ya that's the ticket.
posted by vuron at 4:14 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Conversely, it probably shouldn't be trying to do anything with timezones on a level that could knock down the whole system.
posted by JHarris at 4:14 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Error 53 thing actually has a legit purpose, in that it makes it impossible for somebody -- whether a thief or a police officer -- to steal your phone, replace the fingerprint sensor, and get into your business. (They couldn't just pop out the hard drive and get your stuff because it's encrypted). The problem is that that wasn't a known thing, and so people triggered this security measure without meaning to and it hurt them rather than helped them.

The epoch thing, clearly a bug. It breaks some phones and not others. Kind of a reverse Year 2000 bug.
posted by edheil at 4:14 PM on February 12, 2016 [10 favorites]


It's a stupid bug, but it's not really bricking your phone. Just drain the battery completely and after that it's fine.
posted by pjm at 4:15 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, yeah, that's right, the fingerprint sensor replacement does brick your phone, the year 1970 bug just means you have to bring it in and have them pop the battery out and back in again and it will work. Or, as pjm says, let the battery completely drain.
posted by edheil at 4:17 PM on February 12, 2016


pjm: can you remove the battery and leave the phone lying around for a while? oh, i suspect i just made a silly assumption, knowing what my partner's apple laptop is like.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:18 PM on February 12, 2016


This is what happens when you are beholden to closed platforms.
posted by indubitable at 4:20 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


A few years ago, when I was more of a dick, this is where I would have typed, "This doesn't brick your phone at all--I just set mine to 1.1.70 and instead I found a cool easter egg" just to see if other people would try it.

Just pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds to restore it
posted by BungaDunga at 4:24 PM on February 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


This is what happens when you are beholden to closed platforms.

I know! Just use Android products.

Seriously though, at least when Apple fuck something up I can count on an update to unfuck it. Android still has some embarrassing fuckups (which aren't widely disseminated because Android having fuckups doesn't sell copy) and the fix comes down to a bastardized handset maker version of exploit Russian Roulette.
posted by Talez at 4:25 PM on February 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Someone here has never been asked a timezone question in a technical interview! It's unbelievable easy to screw up anything to do with timezones.

Why is timezone code anywhere near the critical path for booting a device?
posted by kmz at 4:29 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


LY, I don't think this is anything Apple did deliberately. I think it's just a royally bad bug.

Yeah, Apple hasn't made any kind of statement but by all accounts they're repairing affected phones for free at Apple Stores even if they're out of warranty. That doesn't really speak to "intentional bug".
posted by Itaxpica at 4:32 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


> The Error 53 thing actually has a legit purpose, in that it makes it impossible for somebody -- whether a thief or a police officer -- to steal your phone, replace the fingerprint sensor, and get into your business.

You can do that in a thousand ways without bricking the phone, which as I pointed out, doesn't protect you against a moderately sophisticated attacker anyway.

Simply preventing anyone from using the phone until you have re-authenticated should be perfectly good enough. Erasing all the data would be even better - and you could still get the phone turned on.

"Destroy phone if there's any doubt" should NOT be a default setting. If Apple asked people, "Should we destroy this phone if we think it might have been maintained by an authorized person?" I imagine perhaps 5% would say yes.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:33 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Luckily you don't even need Apple to fix your phone - just let the battery run down to zero and the clock resets itself.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:34 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


What I can't figure out is how someone found it. Why would anyone be trying something like this?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:34 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, and it probably is a legitimate bug - there's no security reason they'd do that legitimately.

But the question is whether these bugs are encouraged by a system designed to brick your phone if there are irregularities, rather than attempting to recover as best as possible. My guess is yes.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:34 PM on February 12, 2016


> Luckily you don't even need Apple to fix your phone - just let the battery run down to zero and the clock resets itself.

Wait, I thought the phone was bricked? That means "can't be fixed" not "let the battery run out".
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


lupus_yonderboy: dude, it's a bug. It has nothing to do with any kind of intentional bricking mechanism. If Apple knew about the bug, they would have fixed it rather than putting in place some kind of "anti-bricking" recovery attempt system. The bug is exacerbated by the fact that the normal recovery and restore process, which Apple has provided as a method to recover from many types of software errors, happens not to reset the clock, as it's maintained in hardware. Once the battery runs out, the hardware clock loses power too and it's possible to recover.
posted by zachlipton at 4:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Ars Technica article goes into a bit more detail on the "let the battery run out" part of the story.
posted by zachlipton at 4:38 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, and it probably is a legitimate bug - there's no security reason they'd do that legitimately.

I don't know about you guys, but the fact that we're living in an age where the difference between "intentional bricking" and "bricking because bug" is something that a judgement call has to be brought into, well, that gives me some pause.
posted by JHarris at 4:40 PM on February 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


There should be nothing - nothing at all - you can do to "brick" your phone by mistake. For the small number of people who need secure data, bricking the phone doesn't guarantee that your data can't be read by even a moderately sophisticated hacker, and there are better ways to secure your data than "rendering the phone inoperative".
I'm not intimately familiar with the details here so maybe I'm missing something obvious, but how exactly is that moderately sophisticated hacker going to read shit off the encrypted filesystem of a stolen and then bricked iphone? You know, the situation where law enforcement is unable to read the contents of a non-bricked confiscated Apple phone and they're up in arms about that fact and want Apple to help them?
posted by edheil at 4:48 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think it's just a royally bad bug.

Oh, come on now: why?

Approximately zero people will ever so much as _set the time_ on their iPhones. They get the time automatically from the cell network, or an NTP server over wifi. They leave the factory with time-since-epoch set to some large number and stay that way forever, barring the owner of the phone doing something to deliberately provoke failure.

If you're trying to decide where to put your effort as far as security's concerned, a threat that consists of "the owner deliberately trying to break it in a way a typical user will never see or attempt", well. That goes directly to the back of the line.
posted by mhoye at 4:49 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


With Apple, all these things deny access.

With everybody else, the bugs grant access.

That's why I use Apple. They are the only IT company actively fighting to secure data.
posted by eriko at 4:50 PM on February 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


A few years ago, when I was more of a dick, this is where I would have typed, "This doesn't brick your phone at all--I just set mine to 1.1.70 and instead I found a cool easter egg" just to see if other people would try it.

Yeah. 4chan beat you to it.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:51 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Error 53 thing actually has a legit purpose, in that it makes it impossible for somebody -- whether a thief or a police officer -- to steal your phone, replace the fingerprint sensor, and get into your business.

That remains to be seen. If you get Error 53 after third-party repair, and Apple will not resolve their error either free or at trivial cost when you demonstrate ownership, then my judgement is that security is being abused as a BS excuse to cover intentional anti-consumer action.

If Apple does resolve third-party-repair 53's effectively and without penalty, then my judgement is that 53 is a good-faith security measure.
posted by anonymisc at 4:52 PM on February 12, 2016


If you get Error 53 after third-party repair, and Apple will not resolve their error either free or at trivial cost when you demonstrate ownership, then my judgement is that security is being abused as a BS excuse for imprisoning consumers.

What would you consider "trivial cost?" Paying for a new frontpiece/scanner?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:56 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


That's why I use Apple. They are the only IT company actively fighting to secure data.

omg right? when i reset the clock on my desktop it emails my last 3 tax returns to some address in russia.
posted by indubitable at 4:57 PM on February 12, 2016 [14 favorites]


If Error 53 were a security measure it would kick in when a non-Apple part is detected, not when you upgrade the OS.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:58 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


If Error 53 were a security measure it would kick in when a non-Apple part is detected, not when you upgrade the OS.

That's an interesting point. I believe it is a security measure, but regardless how would the OS know that it wasn't the original part if the part was installed first?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:07 PM on February 12, 2016


An iPhone checks the cryptographic signature of the TouchID scanner every time it boots up.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:10 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


What would you consider "trivial cost?" Paying for a new frontpiece/scanner?

No. Let's say you break the scanner. You get it replaced by a third party phone repair business. Now the phone is a like-new fully functional phone again, but the software throws up Error 53 (because you could be an attacker with a stolen phone). You take the phone the Apple, with proof of ownership. Do they switch off the error for you (thus demonstrating 53 is no more than a layer of security for the consumer, as they claim), or do they screw you over requiring you to purchase a new phone or use their own redundant repair service (thus demonstrating the purpose of 53 is to restrict consumers and anti-compete with third-party repairers)?
posted by anonymisc at 5:10 PM on February 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


Apparently me and Unix time came into existence in the same year. I'm building a bunker for 2038.
posted by bendy at 5:19 PM on February 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


An iPhone checks the cryptographic signature of the TouchID scanner every time it boots up.

And then writes it somewhere to check later? Or are Apple's signed somehow or in a specific range or what?

or do they screw you over requiring you to purchase a new phone or use their own redundant repair service (thus demonstrating the purpose of 53 is to restrict consumers and anti-compete with third-party repairers)?

Well, the problem there is you're asking that they (and the banks and merchants who use Apple Pay) also trust the third party repair people not to have done anything funny.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well, the problem there is you're asking that they (and the banks and merchants who use Apple Pay) also trust the third party repair people not to have done anything funny.

Nah, not buying it. There's a hundred more insecure things a person can do with their credit card data than that (letting a server take it in a restaurant, for instance), and credit card companies don't fall over themselves to seal any of those up. Not even the ones that don't require killing a $600 device.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:42 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


And then writes it somewhere to check later? Or are Apple's signed somehow or in a specific range or what?

It's mated to the secure enclave inside the CPU during production and both are given the same device shared key. The two devices then use AES-CCM and random keys to transport the encrypted details between each other. The CPU forwards messages from the Touch ID sensor to the secure enclave's mailbox but cannot read the message sent.
posted by Talez at 5:43 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's a hundred more insecure things a person can do with their credit card data than that (letting a server take it in a restaurant, for instance), and credit card companies don't fall over themselves to seal any of those up.

Sure, but that's not a concern of Apple's. They're trying to convince people to trust their devices with their financial information (and there's no shortage of people who are skeptical.)

It's mated to the secure enclave inside the CPU during production and both are given the same device shared key.

So why didn't it fail immediately?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:53 PM on February 12, 2016


Well, the problem there is you're asking that they (and the banks and merchants who use Apple Pay) also trust the third party repair people not to have done anything funny.

No. There is no more trust required than whatever trust Apple already operates with regarding people that the phone-owner trusts with their phone.

There is not a problem with phone repair services.

There may be a problem with anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior from one particular phone seller.
posted by anonymisc at 5:54 PM on February 12, 2016


So why didn't it fail immediately?

The Touch ID subsystem does fail immediately. You can't use Touch ID with a replacement sensor that hasn't been remated to the secure enclave. I believe the Error 53 is post-update shenanigans.
posted by Talez at 5:57 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


They are the only IT company actively fighting to secure data.

Can we label this a Republican fact that exposes the massive IT industry wide fake security focus?
posted by juiceCake at 5:58 PM on February 12, 2016


There may be a problem with anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior from one particular phone seller.

Yeah, we're going to disagree there unless I get something more specific.

The Touch ID subsystem does fail immediately.

Well, now it does. It didn't before, obviously. What changed? Apparently the upgrade, but then how did it know things had previously changed?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:04 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


ChurchHatesTucker: Sure, but that's not a concern of Apple's. They're trying to convince people to trust their devices with their financial information (and there's no shortage of people who are skeptical.)

You already do that every time someone orders anything online via a phone. Once you put your CC# and code into the phone, you've trusted it.
posted by Mitrovarr at 6:09 PM on February 12, 2016


So... should I buy an iPhone or not?
posted by teponaztli at 6:10 PM on February 12, 2016


Why on earth is this a Error 53 thread again? It has practically nothing to do with this bug, other than that they both result in non-working phones (and there's a clear procedure to recover from this one). Similarly, hurling your phone off the Empire State Building will result in a non-working phone, but that activity is also not relevant to this discussion.
posted by zachlipton at 6:11 PM on February 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


Well, now it does. It didn't before, obviously.

It did fail before. It just failed out silently and disabled all Touch ID functionality.

What changed? Apparently the upgrade, but then how did it know things had previously changed?

Instead of failing silently after the phone had been upgraded the phone started erroring out and bricking itself which is why people are kind of annoyed.
posted by Talez at 6:12 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Having written boot code for embedded linuxes, I can see one simple cause for the behavior: If the date is 1/1/70 on boot, the phone probably hasn't connected to a time server to get the correct date, so hold off on booting until the time is correctly set. But the settings tell the phone not to get time from a time server, so boot is paused forever.

This is certainly not a bug, since setting time to a date 47 years ago is neither a legitimate nor useful thing to do. Let the user beware!
posted by monotreme at 6:15 PM on February 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Note that the phone is not "bricked", it is simply stuck in the booting state until the battery runs down.
posted by monotreme at 6:17 PM on February 12, 2016


Why on earth is this a Error 53 thread again? It has practically nothing to do with this bug, other than that they both result in non-working phones (and there's a clear procedure to recover from this one).

Sorry, missed the E53 one on this site (I think! hard to keep track sometimes.) And since this one has a clear recovery procedure (and is way harder to opt into) it's less interesting.

Still, /derail
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:18 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


monotreme: "This is certainly not a bug, since setting time to a date 47 years ago is neither a legitimate nor useful thing to do."

Sure, if we expected users to be working on the bare metal. Interface design 101: Error and bounds checking should be performed on any user input. Blowing this off is sloppy at best and incompetent at worst. Especially from a company based on user friendliness and "protecting" end users.
posted by Mitheral at 6:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


A few years ago, when I was more of a dick, this is where I would have typed, "This doesn't brick your phone at all--I just set mine to 1.1.70 and instead I found a cool easter egg" just to see if other people would try it.

Just pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds to restore it


At first I thought there's noooooooouu way it could possibly work. If anything, the heat should cause more damage. But then I thought, ok I'll try it, shame on you internet if it further damages it. Here's my surprised face when it did work: =={}{{}}---OOO!
posted by rainy at 6:45 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


There should be nothing - nothing at all - you can do to "brick" your phone by mistake.

This is such a weird attitude toward a consumer product. It's like saying that there's no way a kid should be able to electrocute themselves by sticking a fork in a wall socket. Car crashes--what's up with that?
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:45 PM on February 12, 2016


A. Not a car
B. Not high voltage.
C. Not a life threatening issue.
posted by SLC Mom at 6:55 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


There should be nothing - nothing at all - you can do to "brick" your phone by mistake.

Yeah, in an ideal world. But here in reality, things like this sneak through. Engineering is a human endeavor, and humans make mistakes.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:55 PM on February 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


This is such a weird attitude toward a consumer product. It's like saying that there's no way a kid should be able to electrocute themselves by sticking a fork in a wall socket. Car crashes--what's up with that?

Those are bad analogies here because they're all using things with the intent of bad operation. Normal operation of an outlet doesn't involve sticking foreign objects in it, and it's actually designed to try to minimize that happening; the car is working completely fine when it crashes into something, it's just a consequence of that correct operation that destroys it, something the manufacturer could not guard against.

When you repair an iPhone, you're trying to make it work correctly again, not sabotage it or direct it to destroy itself. The self-destruction is something willful, in the iPhone, specifically to stymie people trying to get it operational again.
posted by JHarris at 7:34 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Knowing how QA people think, I'm surprised this issue wasn't discovered sooner. Setting the time to the lowest permissible value is exactly the kind of thing you do for bounds checking reasons.
posted by axiom at 7:44 PM on February 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


I heard that Quentin Tarentino destroyed a priceless iPhone in the making of Hateful Eight by insisting it was set to be periodically correct at February 5 1876.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:56 PM on February 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


> Knowing how QA people think, I'm surprised this issue wasn't discovered sooner. Setting the time to the lowest permissible value is exactly the kind of thing you do for bounds checking reasons.

Here, have a joke:
QA Engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a sfdeljknesv.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:12 PM on February 12, 2016 [32 favorites]


Orders "one" beer. Orders .5 beers. Orders the square root of 2 beers. Orders i beers. Orders a different brand of beer. Orders a cervesa. Orders a bear.
posted by JHarris at 8:28 PM on February 12, 2016 [19 favorites]


This is certainly not a bug, since setting time to a date 47 years ago is neither a legitimate nor useful thing to do.

Having sat through Black Hat / Defcon talks with people setting up their own cell towers etc....I'm waiting for a couple of fake cell towers to be setup to automatically reset the time of people's iPhones for the Lulz of it. Would work better if there is also a way to cause a phone to reboot as well.....but I'm sure there are people working on that.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:36 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Reddit top comment is pretty good too, and maybe even more apposite to this post:
Code breaks when deployed to prod anyway, because user entered pi to 17 digits followed by a character that can only be cut and pasted from a EBCDIC mainframe screen.

Product VP yells "didn't you guys test this?"
posted by benito.strauss at 8:52 PM on February 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


Orders i beers.

Orders iBeers.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:54 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


QA - resetting status to IDENTIFIED from NOTABUG. If you don't like it, get UX off their butts and have them filter the input range, or set it to WONTFIX and have your PM come fight me.
posted by underflow at 8:57 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm kinda happy that Apple is a massively profitable niche where everyone is hyperaware when shit goes the least bit sideways - it harkens back to the time when the only Mac anti-virus software was freeware developed by one guy, and he decided to go and focus on killing MS Office Macro virii instead, as the Macs were pretty much bulletproof.

In androidland, of which I am a recent refugee, signed software could be laser-engraving ads for diet supplements on the inside of your eyelids while committing you to for five double-mortgages, and no-one would care, so long as you could customize the launcher or tell the friends you pretended you had exactly how many times you chewed before swallowing through a "social" app. And that's with shit you installed through Google Play, before you even get to side-loading.

Mac vs. PC, all over again, only Mac commands enough market share and first-movers to drag the market its way. Just like in 8-bit times. This is generally a good thing. Tim Cook is all about stewardship.

(Can I just say, Ubuntu phone? Plz. Here, now. With a command line... I have both houses to curse, srs.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:03 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Set the date to January 1, 1970.

Is there an app for that?
posted by JackFlash at 9:16 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hey, so what happens if I don't set the date to January 1, 1970? Do I still get a free iPhone? Or do three people have to click on something first?
posted by oceanjesse at 9:18 PM on February 12, 2016


lupus_yonderboy : "As I said before on this thread, I have no idea why people accept this behavior on this premium product, but there's no accounting for tastes."

People loves them some Apple bashing. They'll even go so far as to claim that an iPhone is "destroyed" by setting a certain date — which is patently false, and then rail against not just the company, but those who would buy their products.

This impulse is what's notable (although kind of depressing) about threads like this.
posted by huron at 9:25 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Workaround: set your phone's date to January 2, 1970.
posted by mazola at 10:26 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


This is such a weird attitude toward a consumer product. It's like saying that there's no way a kid should be able to electrocute themselves by sticking a fork in a wall socket

Suppose humanity somehow made it to the 21st century technology levels without ever needing a wall socket. What do you think would be the #1 design requirement if somebody invented the wall socket today?
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:40 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


People loves them some Apple bashing.

People loves them to claim them some Apple bashing.

They'll even go so far as to claim that an iPhone is "destroyed" by setting a certain date — which is patently false,

If this happened to you, it'd look very well like the device is bricked unless the battery has run down so far as to reset the date, and in the years I've had my iPad 2 this has never happened. It's always had enough power to at least display that empty battery graphic.

and then rail against not just the company, but those who would buy their products.

I've not detected any of the latter in this thread.
posted by JHarris at 10:56 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Halloween Jack: "This is such a weird attitude toward a consumer product. It's like saying that there's no way a kid should be able to electrocute themselves by sticking a fork in a wall socket."

Tamper resistant receptacles mitigate this possibility and have been mandated now most place in the US and Canada.
posted by Mitheral at 11:29 PM on February 12, 2016


We also live in a world where "rm -rf /" can now brick your laptop, thanks to write access to UEFI variables.
posted by destructive cactus at 11:43 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


> "rm -rf /" can now brick your laptop,

I know how computers work, yet I still hesitated before clicking that link.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:55 PM on February 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


There should be nothing - nothing at all - you can do to "brick" your phone by mistake.
  1. An iPhone may not injure Apple or, through inaction, allow Apple to come to harm.
  2. An iPhone must obey the orders given it by Apple except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. An iPhone must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
posted by XMLicious at 12:22 AM on February 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


Apple Admits Repeated Typing Of 'Candyman' In IOS Summons Candyman, Claims Security Feature Not Bug.
posted by reynir at 1:43 AM on February 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Why is timezone code anywhere near the critical path for booting a device?

I've worked on a lot of embedded systems, and I've seen a huge amount of terrible boot loader code. I don't believe that the timezone code per se is anywhere near the critical path for booting the device.

What I suspect is happening:

1. Unix-based operating systems, of which iOS is one, store the current date and time as a single signed integer representing the number of seconds since 01-01-1970 00:00 UTC (ignoring leap seconds).

2. If you're in a timezone with a negative offset from UTC, which includes everywhere in the US, then turning off automatic network time and setting your phone to 01-01-1970 00:00 local time will make its internal Unix timestamp negative.

3. Something in the bootloader - probably code governing the maximum amount of time to wait for some internal process or other to finish - cracks the sads when confronted with a negative timestamp.

If this is on the right track, then:

A. People who have reported that their iDevices don't brick when the time is set to 01-01-1970 00:00 local time might be able to join in on the fun by trying 12-30-1969 00:00, which will be a negative Unix time in any timezone.

B. Phones that have been bricked this way might come good spontaneously, if left running long enough for the hardware clock to end up holding a time that translates to a positive Unix timestamp.

C. As a corollary of (B), many of the recipes devised for unbricking these devices might well be nothing more than superstition.
posted by flabdablet at 2:26 AM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


... Orders null beers. Orders the Beer class object. Replaces the meta-object protocol and orders 1 beer. Orders the bartender's execution.
posted by iffthen at 2:26 AM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can see why this bug exists. But I don't understand why it should be possible to set the date to be decades before iPhones existed.
posted by milkb0at at 2:27 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


how exactly is that moderately sophisticated hacker going to read shit off the encrypted filesystem of a stolen and then bricked iphone?

They probably aren't going to, but if they did, they would need serious hardware skillz, and *then* still have to break the encryption (and without a weak PIN or passphrase, they'd be out of luck).
posted by iffthen at 2:36 AM on February 13, 2016


There should be nothing - nothing at all - you can do to "brick" your phone by mistake.

We'd all love to produce code which is completely bug free. But as a practical matter it can't be done.

The single highest quality piece of software I've ever heard of was the operating code for the Shuttle onboard computers, and the amount of effort that went into developing it and checking it staggers belief. It probably cost 50 times more per line than any ordinary code, and took far longer to develop than any comparable piece of ordinary code.

And what with all that, the very first attempt to launch the shuttle was scrubbed because of a software bug.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:56 AM on February 13, 2016


It would be way cooler if, when you set the clock to Jan 1 1970, the iPhone just disappeared, like that picture of Michael J Fox in "Back to the Future".
posted by chavenet at 3:33 AM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


QA Engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a sfdeljknesv.

Orders "one" beer. Orders .5 beers. Orders the square root of 2 beers. Orders i beers. Orders a different brand of beer. Orders a cervesa. Orders a bear.

Orders iBeers.

Orders null beers. Orders the Beer class object. Replaces the meta-object protocol and orders 1 beer. Orders the bartender's execution.


Orders beers by name. Orders beers by date. Orders beers by type. Orders beers by sfdeljknesv. Leaps onto bar, tears off clothes and performs ritual war dance. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a bееr.
posted by flabdablet at 4:14 AM on February 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Orders a beer after closing time.
posted by flabdablet at 4:16 AM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Walks into a bank. Orders a beer.
posted by popcassady at 4:41 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


The fix is simple, Apple should buy ancestry.com and DNA lock your phone to you when you purchase it. This eliminates selling or buying old phones, but it does ensure that your phone is yours and that Clone Steve Jobs can grow his own clone army of loyal Apple purchasers in 20 years. Then their slogan can be Apple: become part the DNA of Apple*

*Note: cloned participant DNA is the intellectual property of Apple.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:05 AM on February 13, 2016


But I don't understand why it should be possible to set the date to be decades before iPhones existed.

I guess you weren't at the time traveller's convention on January 2, 1970, the panel explained everything. Some people just want to get there a little early and see the sights.
posted by graymouser at 5:56 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Borders an ear.
posted by box at 5:57 AM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Man, there are a lot of people with strong opinions about how to ship software in this thread that have very obviously never done so.
posted by mhoye at 6:08 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


If you replace your Touch ID sensor, set the date to 1/1/1970 and let your battery drain completely, when you restart it your iPhone will have the Frog Fractions 2 app.

And a U2 album.
posted by delfin at 6:13 AM on February 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


delfin, I think that only works on the later models that also have the microwave oven fast-charge feature.
posted by flabdablet at 6:18 AM on February 13, 2016


Stays in the bar past closing time, waits for the bartender to arrive the next day and orders a beer before opening. Orders a reeb. Orders a pint of whiskey. Orders a beer and refuses to pay. Orders a beer and tips the bartender a frog.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:22 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sets the time on the bar clock to 00:00 01-01-1970 and sends the bartender home.
posted by flabdablet at 6:35 AM on February 13, 2016


QA: Hey if you set your phone to zero epoch time, bad things happen.
Devs: Why would a user ever do that?
QA: Because they can and users are stupid but curious monkeys.
Mgmt: Sets bug priority to low. (which means fix some time after the heat death of the universe).
posted by octothorpe at 6:35 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


They probably aren't going to, but if they did, they would need serious hardware skillz, and *then* still have to break the encryption (and without a weak PIN or passphrase, they'd be out of luck).

Even with a weak pin or passphrase they're kind of out of luck. The passcode is entangled with the UID inside the secure enclave so the attack must be performed on device. By the time you get to attempt #9 the gap between attempts is 1 hour. There was a bug prior to 8.1.1 where you could reset the device to foil the password attempt counter but that's been fixed.

The other way involves brute forcing a 256-bit AES key so good luck with that.
posted by Talez at 6:40 AM on February 13, 2016


Orders a beer, picks up a table, drops it in full view of the bartender, then orders another of what he just had.

(I know I just did this but I'm very proud of that one)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:11 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


What happens if you set it to December 31, 1969 and wait a day? Wait, what? You are telling me there weren't smart phones in Vietnam? Then why was the US military playing the world's largest game of ingress then?
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:39 AM on February 13, 2016


We also live in a world where "rm -rf /" can now brick your laptop, thanks to write access to UEFI variables.

For anyone else who, like me, is stupid enough to blast away their Linux partition without first uninstalling GRUB, you will need this. My laptopt is old-school, but it claims to work on UEFI systems as well. Just make sure it restores booting to the Windows partition and not the Windows rescue partition.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:20 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've had to repair the MBR with a disk like that more than once. Now I just install Linux on a Vbox image and run it inside windows and don't deal with GRUB any more.
posted by octothorpe at 8:27 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


What happens if you set it to December 31, 1969 and wait a day?
Well you can't do that, it only goes back to 1/1/1970.
I suspect that if the phone is set to a 'GMT+' timezone, then it doesn't brick.

From the 'The Epoch' link:
Microsoft Windows, on the other hand, has an epoch problem every 49.7 days — but this is seldom noticed as Windows is almost incapable of staying up continuously for that long.
posted by MtDewd at 9:23 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


The most genius iPhone app is Send Me To Heaven which you can see a picture of here.

It records how high you can throw your iPhone. It has two buttons -- Play Again and Share Result.

It was banned from the iStore by the evil people at Apple.
posted by JackFlash at 9:26 AM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


iffthen: "They probably aren't going to, but if they did, they would need serious hardware skillz, and *then* still have to break the encryption (and without a weak PIN or passphrase, they'd be out of luck)."

Does anyone have a strong pin on their phones? It's not like they support a diceware passphrase or anything (as far as I know). Most people seem to have a 4-6 character numeric pin (in most cases probably the same as their ATM PIN to boot).
posted by Mitheral at 10:02 AM on February 13, 2016


Does anyone have a strong pin on their phones? It's not like they support a diceware passphrase or anything (as far as I know). Most people seem to have a 4-6 character numeric pin (in most cases probably the same as their ATM PIN to boot).

iOS supports four digit, six digit and arbitrary length alphanumeric strings as passcodes so they would most certainly support diceware passphrases.
posted by Talez at 10:20 AM on February 13, 2016


You can set a passphrase on an iPhone, but most don't. However, you can set the phone to erase itself after ten bad tries, which makes a pin fairly secure.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:20 AM on February 13, 2016


It was banned from the iStore by the evil people at Apple.

From the App Store Review Guidelines:
13.1 Apps that encourage users to use an Apple Device in a way that may cause damage to the device will be rejected
If Apple were really evil, they'd ship every iPhone with Send Me To Heaven preinstalled on the home screen.
posted by zachlipton at 11:58 AM on February 13, 2016


Devs: Why would a user ever do that?
QA: Because they can and users are stupid but curious monkeys.


I am reminded of my experiences playing user-made Mario Maker levels. Sometimes, in the process of trying to make a course stand out visually, someone will put a semi-solid platform surrounded by blocks in such a way that it would obviously (to a designer's mind) trap Mario if he jumped up there. And yet people still leave messages in those places that read "stuck," and it's still bad design to include them.

This is part of what I'll call the principle of exploration, which applies equally to level design and OS design, and it goes like this: Users should never be irreparably penalized for innocent exploration. There's a little more to it than that, but that's the gist.

Exploring your gadget's UI is part of the process of getting comfortable with a device, and of ultimately treating them as aids to their lives, and not things that will suddenly break when they need them most. Users certainly shouldn't be called stupid for exploring like this!

If it doesn't say THIS MIGHT DAMAGE YOUR COMPUTER, then it jolly well shouldn't damage their computer. This isn't fdisk we're talking about here, it's setting the damn date.

Also, an amendment to something I said above:

If this happened to you, it'd look very well like the device is bricked unless the battery has run down so far as to reset the date, and in the years I've had my iPad 2 this has never happened.

I realized a few minutes ago, this isn't true. My iPad 2 was in drydock for some months with a broken screen until I fixed it, and its battery had to have discharged completely in that time. And the funny thing is, it hadn't forgotten the date and time, that must be stored and maintained by a different battery-backed system. So I'm wondering if the battery-running-down explanation for unbrickings might be in error, that it might be as flabdablet said and be superstition, that it might just be the result of the clock counting up so that the time zone function doesn't wrap around to negative upon boot.
posted by JHarris at 12:38 PM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Does anyone have a strong pin on their phones?

I do. Touch ID makes it easy. My password is ************** (because I'm typing this into a web form using iOS, the password shows up as asterisks for everyone else. Try it!).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:45 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


hunter2

What do you people see?
posted by Talez at 1:08 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


*******

What do you people see?


Seems legit.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:13 PM on February 13, 2016


Can't believe no one else has said it yet, so here it is: "Epoch fail!"
posted by kdar at 7:30 PM on February 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


"NTP server set to 1.1.1970 on a public hotspot will brick* IOS devices."
posted by jjwiseman at 7:22 AM on February 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


for a moment there i thought 1.1.1970 was some weird attempt at a joke about dotted IP addresses. then the significance of what you said dawned on me. i run the only open wifi on the block, it typically has few ios devices connected, and, briefly, the devil whispered in my ear...
posted by andrewcooke at 8:58 AM on February 14, 2016


Heck, I thought it was an address too and though "Okay, now I really don't understand IPv6!".
posted by benito.strauss at 10:06 AM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


> Orders a beer. Orders a beer. Orders a beer. ...

Orders n beers in nlog(n) time.
posted by Westringia F. at 1:09 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


zachlipton: "It was banned from the iStore by the evil people at Apple.

From the App Store Review Guidelines:
13.1 Apps that encourage users to use an Apple Device in a way that may cause damage to the device will be rejected
If Apple were really evil, they'd ship every iPhone with Send Me To Heaven preinstalled on the home screen.
"

They seem to have missed one.
Warning for frightening description of death.
posted by Splunge at 4:01 PM on February 14, 2016


Two questions:

1) How does one not brick an iPhone?

and

2) Why would you set the date to 01 01 1970 anyway?
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:24 PM on February 14, 2016


1) It's normally fairly hard (unless you make ten bad attempts on a protected phone) Even this requires some effort and the right time zones and isn't really bricking.

2) Because someone on the Internet told you to. I think this amounts to a "teachable moment"
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:29 PM on February 14, 2016


Confirmed that 'simply' disconnecting the battery momentarily will resolve the problem.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:43 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


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