http://boingboing.net/2016/02/05/gerror-53-apple-remotely-bric.html

Iphone 6s that have been repaired by independent service centers are bricking themselves, seemingly permanently, with a cryptic message about “Error 53.”

After much stonewalling silence, Apple has confirmed that Error 53 is invoked when the phone determines that it has been serviced by non-Apple personnel, and there is apparently no way to reverse the process. An Error 53’d phone is rendered permanently useless — and the data on it is permanently inaccessible.

ah.

**** Apple.

Yeah I was reading about that earlier. It seems that it isn’t any repair but an unauthorised home button replacement (or even a danaged official home button). It also isn’t clear if it is deliberate or a “bug” just not getting an expected response from the home button.

If it is deliberate it is pretty shocking, and even as an apple fanboi it is something that turns me against the company.

I believe that samsung do something that if the phone is “rooted” then it blows a marker in the circuitry that is irreversible and means there is no warranty support, even if the original OS is reloaded, but of course that doesn’t make the phone unusable.

When you dig deeper into this story it appears to be connected to home-button repairs, which is kind of understandable due to fingerprint recognition and Apple Pay and banking/purchasing features it allows.

They should allow you to carry on using the phone using passcode only – but disable the fingerprint feature.

And if it is deliberate the I wonder about the legality, I mean it is kind of understandable that unauthorised repairs would end the warranty, but deliberately making the device unoporable is a different kettle of fish.

From what I can understand it is to stop people swapping out the home button to bypass the security

New headline :
APPLE SECURITY BYPASS BY SIMPLE HOME BUTTON SWAP SHOCKER

They couldn’t really win could they – interesting to see how they solve this though

Yeah, this is only to do with repairs that involve the TouchID sensor – that thing that biometrically protects access to the device, access to data in apps that support it and enables financial transactions via Apple Pay.

I’m not one for defending Apple regardless, but it does seem like a component that you’d want to have decent anti-tampering checks for.

Disabling the sensor (so falling back to PIN unlock, no Apple Pay, etc) seems a better way than making it inoperable though.

Does that not come into the same sort of category of car retailers voiding warranties if it hasn’t been main dealer serviced – didn’t a court rule that they couldn’t as long as it was serviced in accordance with main dealer instructions and using authorised parts or something? Or was that specific to cars?

And if it is deliberate the I wonder about the legality, I mean it is kind of understandable that unauthorised repairs would end the warranty, but deliberately making the device unoporable is a different kettle of fish.

See this:

When you dig deeper into this story it appears to be connected to home-button repairs, which is kind of understandable due to fingerprint recognition and Apple Pay and banking/purchasing features it allows.

They should allow you to carry on using the phone using passcode only – but disable the fingerprint feature.
It may well be the law of unintended consequences, but anyone who can think without moving his lips should be able to understand that a phone that has banking capabilities, has a very sophisticated fingerprint ID system, and is trusted by major banks world-wide, would be utterly compromised and the entire system thrown into disrepute if all it took to get a stolen phone working again was to have the home button replaced by Mr Dodgy’s 1-hour phone repair in a back alley in Doncaster.
And it’s certainly true that info on the phone may be irretrievable, but that’s what regular back-ups are for, just like if you’d dropped the phone down a Glastonbury bog, or off the deck of a car ferry, or whatever.

OP, thank you for spelling independent correctly.

which is kind of understandable due to fingerprint recognition and Apple Pay and banking/purchasing features it allows.

BS. The fingerprint isn’t stored in the button, the sensor is just a camera, nothing else. It will send the image to the phone, which will process it.
Putting a new sensor in will almost certainly require you to re teach the finger print, as it will have slight differences in the sensor itself.
No way is the finger print scanner itself sending a “yes/no” signal to the handset.

the story on the grarrdian today summed it up: man who was forced to get a dodgey repair as he was in iraq or somewhere due to lack of apple stores (fair enough), was FORCED to fork out 300 quid for a new one. BS, no one forced him to buy the SAME product from a company who had literally seconds before told him to go shove it up his chuff when he asked for support!

I think this is disgusting myself, but wouldn’t suspect anything less from apple.

the sensor is just a camera, nothing else

For the record it’s a capacitive touch sensor.

But given that the touch sensor often defaults back to a PIN, there’s no reason why it doesn’t just do this if it detects something odd about the sensor. Bricking the phone is way over the top given all the data is encrypted on it.

Interesting competition law questions…

As other have said, error 53 is when you damage the home button, usually the glued ribbon cable. Each button is uniquely encoded to the processor ID # of the board. You cannot swap them out and have fingerprint work. You can replace them but will lose fingerprint capabilities and if you update will get the error mentioned.
Basically it stops anyone devising a hacked home button and emptying your bank account.

If it were apple being dicks for the sake of it then why does the error not trigger for unauthorised screen repairs or any other unauthorised repairs? It’s obviously just to protect the integrity of the Touch ID feature. As for being anti competitive, companies have the right to protect their commercial interests. If you put unauthorised parts in your phone/product then you take the risk and the manufacturer will protect their risks. Remember the PS4 hacking issue? Sony was ultimately liable and apple have been slightly stung on the in app purchase thing so are protecting themselves from similar hacking scams.

if all that was true then they could just default to the pin. they don’t though so its not just about the risk its also about making folk buy a new phone.

Apple are the masters of price gouging, so this isn’t really a surprise.

The example above of the guy having to buy a new one sums it up, they do it coz they know people will whine and then buy another one

Sums it up, really.

I’ve been maligned as an Apple Fanboi but I am seriously unimpressed by this.

Ok, I understand that they have to protect the integrity of Touch ID and by extension Apple Pay. But the logical way to do that is to detect the Touch ID has been “tampered” with and refuse to accept it as authentication.

Bricking the phone is ridiculous and enough of a dick-move to make me consider Android.

Sounds like good security to me, storm in a teacup.

Trouble is, it’s not good security though. The phone only bricks when an update is done(from my understanding of the articles). Up to this point everything works fine with the new components. So you can replace the sensors still use Apple pay as long as you don’t update.
Once Apple find out you have done something to your own property they destroy it. Imagine if you did a home service on your car and then took it to a dealer and they told you they were disabling your car so it never worked again as punishment for not using their service.
Once you buy something it is yours. If you want to void the warranty it’s your device to do so with and I don’t believe the original manufacturer has the right to disable your property.

I was initially gobsmacked by this and then, after reading Apple’s explanation, I moved to mildly unimpressed. Flashheart sums it up well, suggesting to me that as far as Apple is concerned this was an oversight and someone thought up a handy way of explaining it away as an undocumented feature,

I live in a country without Apple Pay so the tamper proof bullshit is a little pointless

I live in a country without Apple Pay so the tamper proof bullshit is a little pointless

But it’s also the confidential documents and emails you may have on your phone. Still pretty dumb, as above, just default to the pass code.

I live in a country without Apple Pay so the tamper proof bullshit is a little pointless

It’s not just used for Apple Pay.

So, as I have understand it from this thread, it’s not tamperproof at all? If it’s only when there’s an update that the phone is disabled then there’s a (now widely reported) gaping hole in Apple Pay security.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this was actually a software bug originally and they never updated a phone during testing with a faulty button. iOS gets released into wild. Error 53 “glitch” becomes such a thing they make it a feature

Storm in a teacup. I’m pretty sure I got around error 53 once on a phone someone sent me by just updating with the home button unplugged. Then once done plug it back in.

Scot> it’s tamperproof another button doesn’t work.

As for being anti competitive, companies have the right to protect their commercial interests. If you put unauthorised parts in your phone/product then you take the risk and the manufacturer will protect their risks.

Companies have the right to protect their legitimate and lawful interests, which is something slightly different.

They are not allowing the customers to take the risk of having unauthorised parts in your phone, they’re shutting it down.

A spokeswoman for Apple told Money …..

She adds: “When an iPhone is serviced by an unauthorised repair provider, faulty screens or other invalid components that affect the touch ID sensor could cause the check to fail if the pairing cannot be validated. With a subsequent update or restore, additional security checks result in an ‘error 53’ being displayed … If a customer encounters an unrecoverable error 53, we recommend contacting Apple support.”That’s a bit ambiguous. Does the replacement of the sensor immediately stop Apple Pay from working or can it still be used until there’s an attempted software update? If the former, is there a security hole?

As for being anti competitive, companies have the right to protect their commercial interests. If you put unauthorised parts in your phone/product then you take the risk and the manufacturer will protect their risks.

What exactly is the risk to apple of a customer using a third party device – ok someone hacks it then what- what exactly will happen to apple at this point?

Genuine question I dont use apple so dont know the answer

Even if this was the case, as has been noted they can default to pin.

Junk, as soon as you put a different button in finger print ceases to work. And you need fingerprint for apple pay.

OK so what is the risk to apple of another persons phone having been repaired against their T & C and invalidates the warranty leading to an increased risk of that users phone being used fraudulently at their cots – the customer bears the risk her as the money is not apples.

Still a genuine question – I s there a real risk to apple?

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/08/apple-under-pressure-lawyers-error-53-codes

London-based barrister Richard Colbey, of Lamb Chambers, said it was likely that Apple’s actions breached basic consumer laws in the UK, and added that it could be committing an offence under the Criminal Damage Act 1971.

“It is hard to see how something which ceases to work in this way could be said to be of reasonable quality, one of the determinants of which is durability,” he said. The law states: “A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence.”

If Apple continues with this policy, it could find itself fighting multiple legal battles.

It’s probably all in the standard bazillion page T&Cs we all just press “OK” to accept without actually reading…

The risk to Apple is a reputational one. They’re ahead with Apple Pay and need to ensure it’s seen as completely secure.

But surely its not Apple that are breaking the phones, its the people who dont have the skills to unstick a home button from a piece of plastic.. its not rocket science ive done 30 at least.
If I cock it up I replace the phone – simples
I cant see a risk to apple unless someone were to make a home button capable of imitating the “unlock” signal from a genuine button, theyre just covering their and our arses.

so what is the risk to apple of another persons phone having been repaired against their T & C

The risk is of biometrics that are sold as secure being bypassed. Consumers, banks and retailers being defrauded and possibly investment in the technology becoming obsolete because the system isn’t secure.

Although it is hard to see picture it as a crime that scales to such heights if there is a known fault then iphones could be targeted for crimes beyond their own value.

But the loss of biometrics etc is not what the bricking of the phone prevents all that stops working when the home button is replaced damaged the banking etc ceases go function when the home and fingerprint recognition stop recognising each other . The bricking happens days or months later on update . It is positively not about security , you would not buy are burglar alarm designed to go off one week after its sensors were triggered.

scotroutes – Member
The risk to Apple is a reputational one. They’re ahead with Apple Pay and need to ensure it’s seen as completely secure.
POSTED 2 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

They might have to just suck it up. If you sell a product to someone then yes there is a chance they will alter it in a way that’s not your fault and that other dingbats blame failures resulting from that failure on you. This is the same way that if I replace the steering wheel in my Audi with one made of cheese, it might break.

http://www.mendonipadrehab.com/entries/general/bad-apple-the-intentional-bricking-of-working-iphones-with-error-53
This is a quite interesting view from an independent.

“Purely for entertainment, I quiz the technicians at the stores with common iPhone hardware problems that we see in the independent repair community all the time. “

😀