8 ms·

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in this case.

the__alchemist 1y ago
From observation, "brick" has evolved, as things do in language. In practice, it rarely means the traditional definition you refer to, but the softer one used here.
- Kerbonut 1y ago
  Almost like a "soft"-brick, if you would.
  - taneq 1y ago
    You could say the device was pillowed. :D Although given the typical behaviour of old phone batteries, I guess that’s a little ambiguous.
  - dmckeon 1y ago
    Thus, perhaps "loafed" as in something brick-like, but which may also be soft. And a "loafed" device, being idle, would be loafing.
  - nullhole 1y ago
    A soft brick would be a brick before being fired in an oven, no? So maybe the term shouldn't be 'soft brick' but rather 'muddied'. "That updated muddied my device, I had to clean it up with a restore"
    - dgoldstein0 1y ago
      I appreciate the sentiment but I don't see that catching on. I think a variant of bricked makes sense as it basically means you can't use the device until you can figure out how to fix it. Which the "muddied" analogy doesn't really fit - it's usually possible to use muddy things if not necessarily pleasant.
      - nomel 1y ago
        "fix it" was the definition of the the old usage of brick though, with the "fix it" generally meant a hardware fix, like replaced components. if the fix is reinstalling software, then that means it's still a completely functional piece of hardware. there's nothing wrong with it. you don't say your car is broken because someone who can't drive sits in the driver seat! get off my lawn!
  - nomel 1y ago
    I remember this being referred to as "the OS needs to be reinstalled", a trivial thing that nobody bothered to give a name to, because it was frequent and non-consequential.
- codetrotter 1y ago
  Also, although HN readers probably have many devices in their homes there are people out there who have only a phone and no computer. For them this would be pretty catastrophic. Hopefully they’d take their device to Apple or a third party technician
  - guappa 1y ago
    I'm quite convinced apple would just sell them a new one.
- two_handfuls 1y ago
  Ah yes, the Goebbels effect, also known as "A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  And for that reason I wouldn't hassle laymen over it but among the HN crowd I expect a bit more care. An "anything goes" attitude makes communication more difficult. "Soft brick" is the correct term that already exists.
  - rendall 1y ago
    > "Soft brick" is the correct term that already exists. Which is the term that the article uses. "The result is a device that’s soft-bricked, requiring a device erase and restore from backup."
    - mcherm 1y ago
      > Which is the term that the article uses. ...except in the headline.
      - porridgeraisin 1y ago
        Need to get you to click on it :-)
taneq 1y ago
“Bricking” isn’t a rigorously defined term, it’s more like “realtime” in the sense that it comes with an implicit “(for this particular user in this particular scenario)”. For most users a device is bricked if it doesn’t turn on and work when you press the power button. For most readers here, using dev tools to re-flash a bootloader would be fairly easy but if USB stops working it might be game over. I’m sure there are a few around who could de-cap an ASIC and circuit bend it back to life.
- cantrecallmypwd 1y ago
  Incorrect. Bricking means a device becomes a doorstop that cannot be resurrected or repaired by the user non-invasively. That's the whole point of the term.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    When devices were a bit larger, we would customarily refer to “boat-anchors”
    - cantrecallmypwd 1y ago
      That was a pejorative for unwieldy and inconvenient devices like rugged government secure cell phones that lagged behind consumer tech. Brick means entirely useless except as a doorstop, projectile, or building material.
      - AStonesThrow 1y ago
        I beg to differ. "Boat anchor" not only has the connotation of uselessness, but is also well-documented, such as in the official Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/boat-anchor.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/boat-anchor.html 1. Like doorstop but more severe; implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. “That was a working motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant boat anchor!” I contend that brick is a neologism based on this boat-anchor analogy. A brick is rather small, handheld, portable. No computer component was this way when the "boat-anchor" term was coined. Indeed, many of my colleagues in the 90s based their trust and confidence in hardware on its volume and mass. If we could lift it, or throw it across the room, it was not worthy of respect. Those were the days of magnificent racks loaded with equipment that did comparatively very little!
mook 1y ago
More importantly, the single line only forces a reboot; even if we consider needing external fixes to be a brick, the title is still incorrect.
- SamBam 1y ago
  It doesn't just force a reboot, it forces a never-ending loop of reboots, rebooting each time you reboot it. > The result is a device that’s soft-bricked, requiring a device erase and restore from backup. Requiring a device erase isn't a full brick, no, but it's still pretty serious.
  - mrunkel 1y ago
    > Requiring a device erase isn't a full brick, no, but it's still pretty serious. He totally murdered that guy! What? Why would you say murdered, he only gave him a black eye? I know, but that's still pretty serious.
  - mook 1y ago
    No, the _single line_ part forces a single reboot. The never-ending loop requires setting up a widget, so that's more than one line.
    - internetter 1y ago
      I think you skimmed too fast. Widgets, allegedly, are eagerly evaluated when an app is opened, and the system keeps trying failed attempts: > After restarting, as soon as SpringBoard was initialized, the extension would be woken up by the system, since it had failed to produce any widget entries before, which would then start the process all over again.
      - mook 1y ago
        The article claims that they had to manually cause the widget to crash so that the result doesn't get cached, right? So that's at least one line to trigger the reboot, one line (likely more) to register as a widget, and one to crash it.
cantrecallmypwd 1y ago
Correct. The terminology is wrong. It's an annoying, repeated DoS that doesn't ruin the device permanently but could lose user data if it must be erased.
miki123211 1y ago
There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone. DFU mode boots entirely from read-only ROM, and from there, you can just restore everything via USB cable. Same applies to Apple Silicon Macs. You can damage the system, recovery and emergency recovery volumes, but even then, you can still boot into DFU from ROM and re-initialize everything via another Mac. This is in contrast to some PCs, where if you damage the BIOS (e.g. by suddenly losing power during a firmware update), your device may or may not be bricked. There have even been stories of peoples' computers being bricked via rm -rf /, due to removing everything at /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ (which is actually stored inside the motherboard), and sometimes contains things that the motherboard won't boot without
- Koshcheiushko 1y ago
  rm -rf is nightmare, if used mistakenly. I myself have been victim of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43775027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43775027
  - nomel 1y ago
    If you had root access on your iPhone, to do that, you would see a recovery message on your phone at the next reboot. Then, plugging it into your macBook, you would get a popup asking if you would like to restore it. Bricks don't usually have software restore prompts.
- razakel 1y ago
  [flagged]
- xmodem 1y ago
  > There have even been stories of peoples' computers being bricked via rm -rf / I would expect that most systems should be recoverable from this state with a CMOS clear.
- achierius 1y ago
  "physically" is overstating it. Certainly during development it's possible, which means that -- conditioned on a bad enough bug -- it could hypothetically happen to customers too. Not that I think that's likely, of course, but it is physically possible.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
A tethered restore is still devastating considering how few people backup their iPhone.

The exploit as described doesn't "brick" the device; that would require permanently disabling it. A tethered restore would be all that's required to recover in this case.

the__alchemist 1y ago

From observation, "brick" has evolved, as things do in language. In practice, it rarely means the traditional definition you refer to, but the softer one used here.

Kerbonut 1y ago
Almost like a "soft"-brick, if you would.
- taneq 1y ago
  You could say the device was pillowed. :D Although given the typical behaviour of old phone batteries, I guess that’s a little ambiguous.
- dmckeon 1y ago
  Thus, perhaps "loafed" as in something brick-like, but which may also be soft. And a "loafed" device, being idle, would be loafing.
- nullhole 1y ago
  A soft brick would be a brick before being fired in an oven, no? So maybe the term shouldn't be 'soft brick' but rather 'muddied'. "That updated muddied my device, I had to clean it up with a restore"
  - dgoldstein0 1y ago
    I appreciate the sentiment but I don't see that catching on. I think a variant of bricked makes sense as it basically means you can't use the device until you can figure out how to fix it. Which the "muddied" analogy doesn't really fit - it's usually possible to use muddy things if not necessarily pleasant.
    - nomel 1y ago
      "fix it" was the definition of the the old usage of brick though, with the "fix it" generally meant a hardware fix, like replaced components. if the fix is reinstalling software, then that means it's still a completely functional piece of hardware. there's nothing wrong with it. you don't say your car is broken because someone who can't drive sits in the driver seat! get off my lawn!
- nomel 1y ago
  I remember this being referred to as "the OS needs to be reinstalled", a trivial thing that nobody bothered to give a name to, because it was frequent and non-consequential.
codetrotter 1y ago
Also, although HN readers probably have many devices in their homes there are people out there who have only a phone and no computer. For them this would be pretty catastrophic. Hopefully they’d take their device to Apple or a third party technician
- guappa 1y ago
  I'm quite convinced apple would just sell them a new one.
two_handfuls 1y ago
Ah yes, the Goebbels effect, also known as "A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
fc417fc802 1y ago
And for that reason I wouldn't hassle laymen over it but among the HN crowd I expect a bit more care. An "anything goes" attitude makes communication more difficult. "Soft brick" is the correct term that already exists.
- rendall 1y ago
  > "Soft brick" is the correct term that already exists. Which is the term that the article uses. "The result is a device that’s soft-bricked, requiring a device erase and restore from backup."
  - mcherm 1y ago
    > Which is the term that the article uses. ...except in the headline.
    - porridgeraisin 1y ago
      Need to get you to click on it :-)

taneq 1y ago

“Bricking” isn’t a rigorously defined term, it’s more like “realtime” in the sense that it comes with an implicit “(for this particular user in this particular scenario)”. For most users a device is bricked if it doesn’t turn on and work when you press the power button. For most readers here, using dev tools to re-flash a bootloader would be fairly easy but if USB stops working it might be game over. I’m sure there are a few around who could de-cap an ASIC and circuit bend it back to life.

cantrecallmypwd 1y ago
Incorrect. Bricking means a device becomes a doorstop that cannot be resurrected or repaired by the user non-invasively. That's the whole point of the term.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  When devices were a bit larger, we would customarily refer to “boat-anchors”
  - cantrecallmypwd 1y ago
    That was a pejorative for unwieldy and inconvenient devices like rugged government secure cell phones that lagged behind consumer tech. Brick means entirely useless except as a doorstop, projectile, or building material.
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago
      I beg to differ. "Boat anchor" not only has the connotation of uselessness, but is also well-documented, such as in the official Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/boat-anchor.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/boat-anchor.html 1. Like doorstop but more severe; implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. “That was a working motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant boat anchor!” I contend that brick is a neologism based on this boat-anchor analogy. A brick is rather small, handheld, portable. No computer component was this way when the "boat-anchor" term was coined. Indeed, many of my colleagues in the 90s based their trust and confidence in hardware on its volume and mass. If we could lift it, or throw it across the room, it was not worthy of respect. Those were the days of magnificent racks loaded with equipment that did comparatively very little!

mook 1y ago

More importantly, the single line only forces a reboot; even if we consider needing external fixes to be a brick, the title is still incorrect.

SamBam 1y ago
It doesn't just force a reboot, it forces a never-ending loop of reboots, rebooting each time you reboot it. > The result is a device that’s soft-bricked, requiring a device erase and restore from backup. Requiring a device erase isn't a full brick, no, but it's still pretty serious.
- mrunkel 1y ago
  > Requiring a device erase isn't a full brick, no, but it's still pretty serious. He totally murdered that guy! What? Why would you say murdered, he only gave him a black eye? I know, but that's still pretty serious.
- mook 1y ago
  No, the _single line_ part forces a single reboot. The never-ending loop requires setting up a widget, so that's more than one line.
  - internetter 1y ago
    I think you skimmed too fast. Widgets, allegedly, are eagerly evaluated when an app is opened, and the system keeps trying failed attempts: > After restarting, as soon as SpringBoard was initialized, the extension would be woken up by the system, since it had failed to produce any widget entries before, which would then start the process all over again.
    - mook 1y ago
      The article claims that they had to manually cause the widget to crash so that the result doesn't get cached, right? So that's at least one line to trigger the reboot, one line (likely more) to register as a widget, and one to crash it.

cantrecallmypwd 1y ago

Correct. The terminology is wrong. It's an annoying, repeated DoS that doesn't ruin the device permanently but could lose user data if it must be erased.

miki123211 1y ago

There's physically no way to permanently "brick" an iPhone. DFU mode boots entirely from read-only ROM, and from there, you can just restore everything via USB cable. Same applies to Apple Silicon Macs. You can damage the system, recovery and emergency recovery volumes, but even then, you can still boot into DFU from ROM and re-initialize everything via another Mac. This is in contrast to some PCs, where if you damage the BIOS (e.g. by suddenly losing power during a firmware update), your device may or may not be bricked. There have even been stories of peoples' computers being bricked via rm -rf /, due to removing everything at /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ (which is actually stored inside the motherboard), and sometimes contains things that the motherboard won't boot without

Koshcheiushko 1y ago
rm -rf is nightmare, if used mistakenly. I myself have been victim of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43775027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43775027
- nomel 1y ago
  If you had root access on your iPhone, to do that, you would see a recovery message on your phone at the next reboot. Then, plugging it into your macBook, you would get a popup asking if you would like to restore it. Bricks don't usually have software restore prompts.
razakel 1y ago
[flagged]
xmodem 1y ago
> There have even been stories of peoples' computers being bricked via rm -rf / I would expect that most systems should be recoverable from this state with a CMOS clear.
achierius 1y ago
"physically" is overstating it. Certainly during development it's possible, which means that -- conditioned on a bad enough bug -- it could hypothetically happen to customers too. Not that I think that's likely, of course, but it is physically possible.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

A tethered restore is still devastating considering how few people backup their iPhone.