full-disclosure - Re: iPhone Geolocation storage

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Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:59:35 -0700
From: mark seiden <mis@...den.com>
To: Brandon Matthews <bkmatt@...co.com>
Cc: Full Disclosure <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>
Subject: Re: iPhone Geolocation storage

yes, that's right.  on one of the forensics lists someone pointed out that he started google maps for 6 seconds
and ended up with 1253 locations in the cache, all with the same time stamp.  those would be potential known
locations in your neighborhood.

much fuller disclosure in 

http://markey.house.gov/docs/applemarkeybarton7-12-10.pdf

including that the some of the location data comes from.... google.

it looks like everything gets anonymized, aggregated to 5 digit zipcodes, and max retention of 6 months, but don't
talk much about what the device does except when it uploads data.

the congressional disclosure, while it makes me feel better about location data, contains a few choice items like

Download attachment "Screen shot 2011-04-21 at 5.14.43 PM.png" of type "image/png" (44609 bytes)

it's unclear how apple can keep app developers from retaining location data.  which doesn't seem forbidden by apple, only by law.

it's also unclear why they keep really old data in the cache on the phone.  cache bloat results for little benefit.

the android doesn't do time-based pruning either and has a similar location cache with the same data it.

it appears to me that since the keying is by mac address or the tower id that there will only be one timestamped item for
each of those.  so if you go around the same neighborhood repeatedly, the same data will be in the cache.   so not exactly
tracking, just recency.

but it would seem prudent to both specify and implement the briefest retention of the location data that was possible to perform
the function expected by the user.

On Apr 20, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Brandon Matthews wrote:

> 
> I've been poring over my phone's data, and I'm not sure if the resolution is
> just very low, or if it's logging the locations of towers and not my phone.
> 
> Ex: http://imgur.com/2m5tO
> 
> I'm going to xref with FCC databases soon to try and find out.
> 
> B
> 
> (Not speaking for Cisco, only for myself and with nobody's approval)
> 
> On 4/20/11 12:11 PM, "Michele Orru" <antisnatchor@...il.com> did declare:
> 
>> Already twitted today.
>> Pretty scary btw. I hope there's not the equivalent for Android.
>> 
>> antisnatchor
>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Thor (Hammer of God) <mailto:thor@...merofgod.com>
>>> April 20, 2011 9:05 PM
>>> 
>>> 
>>> For those of you who have not seen this yet:
>>> 
>>> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/apple-location-tracking.html
>>> 
>>> Description: Description: Description: cid:image001.png@...BA43F.5B83F2A0
>>> 
>>> /There's no reason to think "outside the box" /
>>> 
>>> /if you don't think yourself into it. /
>>> 
>>> **
>>> 
>>> *My newest book: "Thor's Microsoft Security Bible
>>> <http://www.amazon.com/Thors-Microsoft-Security-Bible-Infrastructures/dp/1597
>>> 495727C:/Users/thor/Documents/Cakewalk>"
>>> *
>>> 
>>> **
>>> 
>>> *Timothy Thor Mullen
>>> thor@...merofgod.com <mailto:thor@...merofgod.com>*
>>> 
>>> *http://www.hammerofgod.com <http://www.hammerofgod.com/>*
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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>> _______________________________________________
>> Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
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> 
> _______________________________________________
> Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
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