from Hacker News

iOS Single App Mode Escape

by jnieminen on 10/23/23, 7:48 PM with 48 comments

  • by qingcharles on 10/24/23, 12:56 AM

    When I was in jail they had kiosks to order commissary snacks. I managed to take advantage of a race condition to crash out of the app onto the desktop. Typing was a pain because you had to use the on-screen keyboard, and I would only have a few minutes before a crowd of detainees would appear and start squawking excitedly, hoping that I could access their Facebook accounts for them, and drawing the attention of the guard.

    (there was a lot of bugs in the kiosk, for instance, no bounds checking on most inputs)

  • by enoch2090 on 10/24/23, 1:44 AM

    Back in highschool they also had those kiosks for adding funds to our student cards, and it would speak out like "Success". I saw someone crashed out the app (probably with a race condition, too) and used the ethernet to download audio files they prepared on the internal servers. The next day the kiosk began to yell hilarious stuff on success and that was hell of a week...

  • by ballenf on 10/24/23, 2:01 AM

    I get the desire to be compensated for the work that went into reproducing the Guided Access escape, but I have to agree that this is not a security issue.

    Guided Access controls are in the Accessibility settings. Apple has marketed the feature as one of convenience.

    And I think a hard reboot, at least this used to be true, will also exit the mode. (Hold power and home button or power and volume button combo.)

  • by amluto on 10/24/23, 3:24 AM

    > Features like Guided Access and Restrictions are designed to provide parents and system administrators with the tools to discourage violations of policy by legitimate users.

    Guided Access is buggy crap. I’ve seen children break out of Guided Access. I also regularly need to completely reboot an iPad to get Guided Access to work at all.

  • by gjsman-1000 on 10/24/23, 12:12 AM

    Part of me wishes that Apple would license out iOS and macOS; and the chips they run on; for the specific purposes of embedded and industrial development.

    A MacBook, as good as it is for Office work, simply is not suitable on the construction site. If macOS was, say, licensed to Panasonic for their Toughbook line and it was only available to commercial customers, that would be a better arrangement.

    Or, another example: iOS is fantastic, but trying to reconfigure an iPad might not be as good as just building a customized PoS system with iOS embedded. As long as these customized devices are for commercial sale only (and thus don't damage Apple's customer reputation)... why not?

    Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Even if Apple only sold chips 5 generations out of date (like the A12), it would be more than enough to provide a smooth, fast, easily updatable, easy to develop for, theoretically low cost platform for smart devices.