iPhone crashing bug likely caused by code added to appease Chinese government

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/iphone-crashing-bug-likely-caused-by-code-added-to-appease-chinese-govt/

by bangonkeyboard • 8 years ago

215 134 8 years ago

arstechnica.com

koops• 8 years ago

Sure, companies have to adapt to markets. But inserting code like this, buggy or not, is a cowardly act by Apple. They should be ashamed, and apologize.

pavs3• 8 years ago

but they are champion of privacy or something like that. And google who walked out of China because they refused to bend to their rules are the bad guys.

brisance11• 8 years ago

You do know that Hong Kong is technically part of China, right?

rrggrr• 8 years ago

I'm having a hard time understanding what is cowardly about complying with Chinese law when selling products inside China. There are many laws in the US I don't agree with, but I'm obligated to comply with them for as long as I choose to live here and remain a citizen. For example, its essentially US law that Apple's officers have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholder's best interests. Not participating in the Chinese cellular market over principle violates that principal of law. If you want Apple to be "brave" then persuade the US Congress to require that Apple not comply with repressive Chinese law; or convince Apple's shareholders to prohibit the same. Short of those outcomes Apple is doing precisely what its supposed to be doing.

wyuenho6• 8 years ago

Apple is doing precisely what its supposed to be doing.

Such as aidding and abetting authoritarian foreign governments to suppress freedom of speech.

I'm having a hard time understanding why you are having a hard time understanding why this is cowardly, given that Apple is not particularly cowardly when it decided to stand up to US government surveillance.

benchaney• 8 years ago

For example, its essentially US law that Apple's officers have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholder's best interests. Not participating in the Chinese cellular market over principle violates that principal of law.

This isn’t true at all.

testvox• 8 years ago

The courts don't review normal business judgements. Even when there is a fiduciary duty. If that wasn't true then no one would want to risk being a officer because they would be constantly getting sued by upset shareholders.

The courts will defer to erroneous business judgments, provided that the officers or directors did not show gross negligence in their review and decision-making process. Without this rule in place, many individuals would be unwilling to serve as officers and directors and business people might be reluctant to take commercial risks that could benefit a corporation in the long run.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibi...

kodablah7• 8 years ago

I'm having a hard time understanding what is cowardly about complying with Chinese law when selling products inside China. There are many laws in the US I don't agree with, but I'm obligated to comply with them for as long as I choose to live here and remain a citizen.

That you draw such equivalence may be why you have a hard time understanding.

jumelles2• 8 years ago

I'm obligated to comply with them for as long as I choose to live here and remain a citizen.

Some would argue - me included - that morally, only just laws must be followed.

beebmam• 8 years ago

Cooperating with China is cooperating with authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

zajd3• 8 years ago

So is working with the US, or Britain, or like 90% of the governments in the world (hell, probably closer to 100%)

craftyguy2• 8 years ago

It's bad to ignore countries who are actively participating in human rights abuses, but it's not nearly as bad as actively participating in human rights abuses.

Even though the US does participate to some degree (vast homeless populations, the whole separating families at the border thing, etc), it's no where near the scale/magnitude that you see in China.

fpgaminer• 8 years ago

I don't know the exact status of iOS in China, but, for example, if iMessage still works there and iOS is still secure then personally I'd call it a victory. Being able to provide a dystopian society with privacy, end-to-end encryption, etc, at the cost of censoring a flag. "Ends justifying the means", etc, etc. We all know the arguments. But the real world is messy.

For reference, I've been to Taiwan. Beautiful country. Censoring their flag in China is a cheesy move on China (and Apple's) part. But again, I'll take that in exchange for the other pro-privacy victories Apple can make.

JayXon2• 8 years ago

Nobody uses iMessage in China because SMS is expensive. iCloud data in China is stored in a datacenter in China where the Chinese government can access any data any time they want with no warrant whatsoever.

IBM• 8 years ago

So what's the US's (and the world's) excuse post Nixon's visit to China? The world could have easily continued to isolate China like they do North Korea today.

I don't see why a non-state actor like Apple should try to act like the State Department.

jumelles2• 8 years ago

Money, obviously.

badbug• 8 years ago

-Sent from my iPhone. Made in China.

debracollain• 8 years ago

So much bullshit. As a Chinese citizen that lived in America for a long time, I found US government being so much worse than China.

tonylinn803• 8 years ago

Can't agree more

lucb1e3• 8 years ago

I'm curious because I don't know a lot about China (other than what Western media reports, which is colored): what was worse in the USA compared to China in terms of government, oppression, etc.?

(I am not from the USA by the way, so don't worry about offending me or anything!)

d0100• 8 years ago

Wow. That's retarded.

lucb1e3• 8 years ago

Your response only contributes to the problem, not the solution. If we share wealth (rather than refusing to cooperate or even starting a war to "free" the poor people (war always knows at least one losing side, often two)), the people will be able to have a better life than if we do not. If we refuse to cooperate at all, we shouldn't trade and send things like iPhones (in this case) at all. Sure, they can build their own, but we already have them. Why reinvent the wheel? It goes the same for all other goods and services.

Things like ammunition for the government is different, but in general, goods and services offered to people anywhere usually makes both sides be better off, because that's why people trade: they're both happy with what they receive. Refusing to cooperate because of something that the trading partner (such as an individual in China) cannot easily change... that's not unlike selecting based on someone's skin color.

brisance11• 8 years ago

And this is how extremism wins.

The world's economy has been inter-connected for some time; some part of that computer or phone that you're typing that on, is probably made in China.

dang2• 8 years ago

Would you please not post flamebait to HN threads and especially not nationalistic flamebait? These discussions are all the same and don't belong on this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bowmessage• 8 years ago

(his friend’s phone specified the region as the US and the language as English, followed by Chinese.)

I use the Chinese keyboard as a very rudimentary Mandarin speaker. Does this mean the Chinese government was still getting information on my chat history even though I'm a US citizen?!

phyzome• 8 years ago

Probably, but that's unrelated to what the article is about. :-P

toyg2• 8 years ago

it's not a keylogger -- it's a simple "if" branch to hide the Taiwan flag from the emoji set.

Shivetya• 8 years ago

do they hide offensive emoji's in other countries? would the hide the Israeli flag for phones sold in Middle Eastern countries? I would love to find a published list of what Apple does censor to accommodate specific country or regional issues.

andy-x• 8 years ago

As a bonus Apple should add a bug that crashes US-region messenger every time someone types Trump or reads Trump's tweets :)

parliament32• 8 years ago

I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold.

Why is this code even present on US devices? Is the word "Taiwan" such a bad word in China that, instead of some reasonable action, it crashes the OS? Is the Chinese government so upset about Taiwan they're insisting manufacturers hide the flag from the keyboard?

All aspects of this are mind-boggling.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 8 years ago

I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold.

Only when they are sure that the government really can't punish them for it, and it gets them good PR. When dealing with a government that will ban the sales of the iPhone in that country, they roll over and make sure they do whatever they need to do to have friendly relations with them.

MBCook3• 8 years ago

And the country is big enough. Maybe they’d stand their ground against Liechtenstein but China is WAY too important.

They also said they’d do what the US government required. They didn’t like the idea of the gov being able to unlock any phone and lobbied against it but said they’d follow the law if it exists.

lostlogin• 8 years ago

Possibly also related - the phones are made there too.

bigiain3• 8 years ago

Not just ban the sale of iPhones in China - they could potentially stop the manufacture of all iPhones (and every other bit of Apple hardware).

they need to do to have friendly relations with them

Yep. That sure do...

NamTaf2• 8 years ago

According to the CCP, there is no Taiwanese flag. Taiwan is just part of China.

Qantas just folded over CCP pressure to change their stance on calling Taiwan a nation rather than a territory. [1] China is really sensitive about this and pushes its influence heavily on this particular point.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to-tai...

lucb1e3• 8 years ago

(CCP is Chinese Communist Party, for anyone else wondering.)

derefr4• 8 years ago

What happens when someone else sends you the Taiwanese flag emoji?

bigiain3• 8 years ago

Is the word "Taiwan" such a bad word in China that, instead of some reasonable action, it crashes the OS?

From my reading of the article, the intention was not to crash the device, but to hide the Taiwanese flag emoji - and the crash was because the code intended to do that was buggy.

So no - it's not _that_ bad a word.

Is the Chinese government so upset about Taiwan they're insisting manufacturers hide the flag from the keyboard?

Yes, it seems this is true - and while I've never needed to deal with requests like that from a nation state, it does seem kinda cowardly on Apple's part to agree to that, and it seems quite at odds with the resistance to the FBI getting a screenlock bypass to that iPhone 5 a while back...

adventured2• 8 years ago

and it seems quite at odds with the resistance to the FBI getting a screenlock bypass to that iPhone 5 a while back

It's not at odds at all. The US isn't going to arbitrarily blockade Apple's market access over the screenlock conflict. At worst you go to court and battle the US Government over that, with a decent chance of prevailing. China will and can do anything it likes, including entirely removing your market access, if you injure their fragile national self-esteem. They're very sensitive about perceived slights, whether due to their history or the inherent fragility of authoritarian regimes, or both. I'm not making a joke about their over-sensitivity, it's a real thing that all companies must deal with there.

Apple basically told the US Government point blank: no; on something important to the Feds. What happened to Apple in consequence? Nothing. Try that with China. They'd probably love an excuse to kick Apple out, even if briefly, to bolster their domestic alternatives (doing it briefly is ideal, because it might make it nearly impossible for Apple to recover lost market share, and then China gets to pretend they're still open to Apple's products after the damage is done).

tinus_hn• 8 years ago

I’d rather they hide some keys in some countries than give away my secrets to government agencies. It doesn’t compare at all.

ubernostrum4• 8 years ago

As others noted, it appears Apple was attempting to keep the Taiwan flag emoji (🇹🇼) out of the emoji keyboard depending on localization settings.

This is a well-known cost of being able to do business in China; the version of your product for sale/use in the PRC cannot in any way acknowledge the existence of Taiwan/ROC as a separate entity. Most vendors simply have localization switches which hide/re-label Taiwan in location selectors, use some icon other than the flag to let users select the zh-TW localization, re-label any displayed maps, etc.

IIRC Microsoft got in trouble years and years ago for a mistake in code they shipped, which accidentally displayed either "Taiwan" or the flag in a build of software for use in the PRC.

This has been the case for many, many years. Most HN readers probably just don't deal often enough with localization issues to realize how politically sensitive they can be, and how easily even a small misstep can get you in trouble with a government.

derefr4• 8 years ago

Can you list "Taiwan" as an entry if you don't really care about countries per se, but are just making a big list of states/provinces/territories/other small "cultural" boundaries? Whether or not Taiwan is a country, and whether or not Taiwanese is a language, Taiwan is certainly a place, containing a number of people; and those people certainly speak a mutually-unintelligible dialect of Chinese.

Could I get away with listing "Cultures" and "Dialects" rather than "Countries" and "Languages"?

slededit• 8 years ago

Win 95 had a time zone map, but after numerous countries (not just China) with border disputes demanded changes they removed the feature entirely.

RugnirViking• 8 years ago

"Most HN readers probably just don't deal often enough with localization issues to realize how politically sensitive they can be, and how easily even a small misstep can get you in trouble with a government."

I feel like plenty of countries manage just fine. My app is not blocked and I am not arrested in greece for referencing 'Macedonia' in a list of countries.

Hell I could go round making hilariously wrong UI borderline offensive like including goa as part of portugal or canada as part of the UK and people would think im silly sure but not ban the company althogether...

I would be interested in any examples not related to the chinese government or thai lese majeste laws. Also perhaps not obvious ones like map border disagreements.

xref• 8 years ago

Does Apple hide the Israeli flag for users in Saudi Arabia etc?

Is there a list of these kinds of govt requests they choose to abide by?

designcode• 8 years ago

"Does Apple hide the Israeli flag for users in Saudi Arabia etc?"

No, they don't.

analogmemory• 8 years ago

It's not like Apple removed all traces of "Taiwan" from iOS. They are simply trying to comply with the local laws of China, which unfortunately is the cost of doing business there. You can still set your keyboard or/and language settings to Chinese (Taiwan)

Apocryphon• 8 years ago

They didn't even bother to swap the Taiwanese flag emoji with a custom one of the Chinese Taipei flag:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei

dep_b• 8 years ago

Getting out of China is a move by Google I still admire. Perhaps “the old Google” but they never reversed that decision for the shareholders.

earenndil• 8 years ago

I thought they moved out because they were having difficulty getting penetration?

brisance11• 8 years ago

Upvoted you. Google is still operating in Hong Kong, which is part of China.

millstone2• 8 years ago

Google had a (rightful) chip on their shoulder after they discovered Gmail had been targeted and hacked by the Chinese government.

Still I think it would have been better for Chinese citizens if Google had found a way to continue operating in China, even if partially censored. It's not good for humanity when the largest country in the world becomes increasingly inwards-directed.

thorwwed9• 8 years ago

I don't understand why China didn't just send a National Security Letter and request the information that way.

ubernostrum4• 8 years ago

Today you learned: even though you think Google is "out" of China, the borders and labels displayed in Google Maps still change if viewed from within China (and for many other countries, too, depending on their stances in territorial disputes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ZMub2UrKU

ramblerman• 8 years ago

Countries like Saudi and UAE have 'similar' software requests. Frequently they will request any map software either blanks out or overwrites Israel.

mankash666• 8 years ago

Apple is generally full of shit. They'll refuse to unlock a terrorist's phone in the US but will get on all fours for the Chinese government's absurdly unreasonable requests.

And they'll gladly throw users privacy under the bus in China by forking over iCloud China to a government backed/owned cloud.

The next time they pretend moral superiority over some obviously inane topic, like protecting a terrorist, best get a supeona from China.

JudasGoat• 8 years ago

Because of Apple's kowtow to China, human beings will be imprisoned, tortured, and executed from information gleaned from Apple devices. Not just common criminals but political and religous dissidents. I would imagine the other cell phone choices available are just as bad, but does that make it ethical to be part of CCP's surveilance?

wmblaettler• 8 years ago

Reminds me of a method found in the SharePoint SDK called HideTaiwan() [1]

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/de...

sofaofthedamned• 8 years ago

So hang on a bit here - i'm not an Apple fan, don't use their phones, ditched my MacBook etc.

But this crash is a bit convenient. It smells to me like a teenager complying with the letter of the rules. Their QA, although awful recently, surely would have picked up this crash?

So maybe Apple deliberately made the code crap to telegraph the fact they'd been coerced into writing the code? Assuming they'd been told by PRC to not give specifics of what they had to comply with?

hardly_a_mirage• 8 years ago

Knowing fully that they would be heavily criticized for complying? I think not.

If Apple wanted the world to know, they would simply release a statement.

dang2• 8 years ago

The original blog post is https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x34.html and has more technical information.

iPhone crashing bug likely caused by code added to appease Chinese government

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