Hot take - I’ll wager China is publicly announcing this so Chinese citizens stop trusting Airdrop. Intelligence organizations usually like to keep uncovered vulnerabilities private so they don’t get patched. And if there is a vulnerability, Apple will 100% patch that shit.
By sowing doubt in AirDrop’s security, that might be enough to get Chinese citizens to stop using it. And if enough people stop sharing or receiving, then that is going to kneecap it as a channel for dissent.
So don’t go to China and if you do don’t send any important but unencrypted files via short-distance signal from one iPhone to another iPhone, gotcha.
Thing is, the actual airdrop file transfer should be gated behind a 2048-bit RSA hash.
I’m curious to see what the security vulnerability is and how long it will remain open. China has been thirsting to find one for years.
I haven’t read anything about cracking the data itself though, just being able to identify the phone number of a sender. The infos they give is just too vague at this point.
