According to the country’s authorities, Chinese security experts have managed to break the protection of Apple’s file sharing function.
American news channel CNN says that a Chinese technology company has cracked the security of Apple’s Airdrop feature. According to CNN, the information comes from Beijing authorities.
Experts from Wangshendongjian Technology have allegedly built a tool with which it is possible to find out the identity of the sender of files sent with the Airdrop function.
With Airdrop, you can send files from one Apple device to another, as long as they are close to each other. Activists have used the function, for example, on public transport, distributing content to passers-by that the Chinese state considers inappropriate.
Files can be sent without an internet connection, so according to the authorities, it was not possible to track down the suspects with the usual network surveillance methods.
Despite Airdrop’s protections, the experts managed to find out the phone numbers and email addresses of the people who sent the files.
Authorities say they have identified several suspects who have been using Airdrop to distribute prohibited content. The cases are related to demonstrations that were organized in China for democracy in 2019 and the government and the president Xi Jinping against in 2022.
Among other things, the shared files and pictures encouraged people to join the protests and gave more information about them.
Since then, Apple has made it more difficult to share files with people you don’t know using Airdrop. The function has also been misused by, for example, sharing unwanted images to the devices of nearby people.