I’ve been doing everything in computers for 25+ years and have worked in SCI Government NOCs, including the network stack for every OS. Your text is so wierd, I think maybe you didn’t watch the IETF video did you? The networking isn’t between AirTags, where did you get that? So wierd The phones use Bluetooth Networking to connect to Bluetooth tracking devices.

So, when the phone senses a tracker and tries to get it’s status, whom it’s tracking, etc, via the new protocol, you are saying it doesn’t use Bluetooth networking? And that if it does, it stays on the phone and does’t proliferate to other devices using Network Protocols?

I’m sorry, but please watch the whole presentation.

So in this Verge article where it says Apple and Android have integrated it into the “Find My Devices” networks for both platforms, it is somehow not using a network?

If I were you, I would not start social media posts with your job experience if you didn’t read or watch any instructional material before you post, just to value your own career.

I mean, that’s why I posted it, to hack the technicals details, take nothing for granted, and not assume anything.

This network tracks items specifically built on this protocol

Wrong. It tracks all Bluetooth devices, but provides more functionality if the protocol is used by owned device + tracking device.

you’ll already know where the user is since you own the fucking network.

Strange comment, who owns what network that is valid here in this context? This network works across Apple and Android Bluetooth Low Energy, no one owns that network.

Because the “worldwide tracking network” that already works is called the cellular network

Wrong. Although you obviously get all sorts of data to use from LTE/CDMA/etc from a phone, you need to catch it in between a tower handoff which records the movement speed and it’s not accurate. Really only accurate if you use three towers, high power, in close range of the device, but that is Nation State level phreaking. BLE will be able to use every device in the vicinity and would be trackable down to inches, just like the AirTag and what these devices are meant for.

I suggest

Comical

I can appreciate your re-iterating of the fundamentals of extremely easy to understand tech, but instead of basic thinking, you just repeating the already presented text which anyone can read hopefully, I presented a case for how it could be used that meets all technical specifications and is therefore possible. Likely even, given big tech track record.

This pheneomena of using tech “not as in the manual” is common. In fact, the Apache web server team was not sure it would work and the Internet adopted a series of HTTP patches as a whole unlike they intended.

don’t have any network capability themselves

That is just wrong and I can’t understand how you came to that conclusion. I also invite you to think of it as a network, because it is using Bluetooth in a network?

Thank you for adding this, erm, maybe a bit “insider” info, as I always wondered how easy and reliable it was to map MAC to Manufacturer on mobile devices. Given what you say, the IETF tracking database could technically contain, or used as metadta, for another system to identify all device models.

Yeah, and what is that MAC generation scheme Apple/Android uses from a Security standpoint, what conditions make it regenerate and how often? How easy is it to map a “new” random MAC against a Model again when it re-enters the network and fingerprints itself again.

Lots to think about it.

So proud of you NetBSD, this is why I sponsor you, slam dunk for the future. I’m working on a NetBSD hardening script and Rice as we speak, great OS with some fantastically valuable niche applications and I think, a new broad approach I’m cooking up, a University Edition. I did hardening for all the other BSD, I saved the best for last!

If you would like to vote on whether, or by what year, AI will be in the Linux Kernel on Infosec.space:

https://infosec.space/@wravoc/112441828127082611