It would be amazing if this latest memo had different wordings per group of people.
They search would be narrowed and they would have truly made an effort to track these leaks.
That reminds me of all the espionage and counter-espionage that (at least used to) occurred in EVE clans/guilds (not sure if that's the right word). They even had custom plugins for their messaging boards where they could use BBCode to offer multiple words and the forum software would present a different combo of words so that if someone copy/pasted it then they could narrow it down either right away or with a few examples. As in they would have 4+ words in an announcement that had multiple variants and would record "We showed User A the following 1:1, 2:3, 3:2, 4:3..." (variable-word-instance-index:variant-index).
Also, I can’t seem to find a source for it but there’s also a technique used where screenshots have the logged in user’s ID encoded in the background of the screenshot by using hex colors that effectively look the same.
No it's not. For example almost everyone has curtains. Do you think everyone that closes their curtains is deceiving someone? Of course not. There are many reasons to keep something private, one of them beeing deception. But it's far from the only one.
If I don't publish my private SSH keys for all to see, am I being deceptive? No, I am protecting my interests. While I do prefer to know when Apple is acting in bad faith, this blanket statement is a weird one to make.
Don't know if you're in the US but if so, I'll remind you that we have multiple constitutional amendments that protect your right to keep secrets. But if you find those amendments to be unethical, I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your next encounter with the police.
The fact that you're re-enacting https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ aside, the comment was about the clause about making the world a better place, not the clause about fostering connections. (And even for that clause, if the extent of fostering is that they have a web browser based on Konqueror and a network stack based on BSD that lets you connect to Hacker News, it's not clear how much credit should be ascribed to Apple for it.)
Point taken, but to be fair on their end; their design philosophy for phones ushered a phenomenon where we have access to millenia of information gathered through Eons of research at any place with a phone connection, in a form factor that makes it easy and convenient to carry and consume. These devices can also transmit video or audio in real time to anyone in the world (again, with a connection) with services not tied down by international toll booths.
It's the most Star Trek like thing that has been achieved in the real world since the cell phone itself was invented. Google picked up the lower end slack and made these devices available in even some 2nd world countries, but Apple did pave a way.
i'm guessing the double "were were" in the second paragraph is one of many things in there by which they segregate the employees to determine who sent the email.
I remember reading somewhere text steganography being used not to encode a hidden message but to identify recipients who might leak the text. One way is to introduce small mistakes or differences like "were were" but differently for each recipient. One might get "were were" and someone else might get "the the", a third one might get a superfluous comma, etc., even harmless differences which are not mistakes are possible. One possible difference corresponds to a bit of information. If you have one hundred possible differences, you have one hundred bit of identificating information.
But I am sure that it is possible to work around this. Just don't give the exact memo text to the public. Paraphrase the text. I am afraid copy-edit or some intentional changes won't be enough if you don't paraphrase the text.
Dangerous and prone to mistakes but surely lucrative or satisfying for the leaker.
Too dangerous. What if every department gets a different phrase?
Those people would probably do something like innocuously forward it to other departments. Reply to your version of the memo, but respond to the entire design and sales teams. Something like "What a great memo by Tim Cook!"
I could imagine that steganography is only one part of the puzzle who is the impostor.
Perhaps Apple has a secret departement dedicated to identify leakers. If they found someone they strongly suspect they lay out a trap, for example by only sending him confidential information.
And, if someone innocuously forwards a memo, they have the electronic paper trail of that.
Spionage, counter-spionage and counter-counter-spionage. Apple is waging a war.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048674
Also, I can’t seem to find a source for it but there’s also a technique used where screenshots have the logged in user’s ID encoded in the background of the screenshot by using hex colors that effectively look the same.
leak-AB-ly: AB test your emails to see who is leaking.
Secures 10m in funding, with a valuation of 10bn.
Can’t make this shit up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap
https://xkcd.com/525/
All truths or falsehoods are within some context and cannot be divorced from context.
What does this have to do with "danger" or "evil"?
That seems like a trivial point to me, though.
As soon as somebody nosy is interested, then there is a purpose of deception.
But i hope Apple is clever enough to walk away from that feature for good.
Maybe someone can leak the work they do to leave the world a better place because they have been real good at keeping that secret.
It's the most Star Trek like thing that has been achieved in the real world since the cell phone itself was invented. Google picked up the lower end slack and made these devices available in even some 2nd world countries, but Apple did pave a way.
I remember reading somewhere text steganography being used not to encode a hidden message but to identify recipients who might leak the text. One way is to introduce small mistakes or differences like "were were" but differently for each recipient. One might get "were were" and someone else might get "the the", a third one might get a superfluous comma, etc., even harmless differences which are not mistakes are possible. One possible difference corresponds to a bit of information. If you have one hundred possible differences, you have one hundred bit of identificating information.
But I am sure that it is possible to work around this. Just don't give the exact memo text to the public. Paraphrase the text. I am afraid copy-edit or some intentional changes won't be enough if you don't paraphrase the text.
Dangerous and prone to mistakes but surely lucrative or satisfying for the leaker.
Those people would probably do something like innocuously forward it to other departments. Reply to your version of the memo, but respond to the entire design and sales teams. Something like "What a great memo by Tim Cook!"
I could imagine that steganography is only one part of the puzzle who is the impostor.
Perhaps Apple has a secret departement dedicated to identify leakers. If they found someone they strongly suspect they lay out a trap, for example by only sending him confidential information.
And, if someone innocuously forwards a memo, they have the electronic paper trail of that.
Spionage, counter-spionage and counter-counter-spionage. Apple is waging a war.