The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice has developed a way to identify users who send messages through Appleʼs AirDrop feature. According to the Chinese government, this was done to "eradicate unwanted content".
This is reported by Bloomberg.
The hacking technique can identify numbers and email addresses of senders who exchange content via AirDrop. So police have already identified several suspects, without disclosing whether anyone has been arrested.
"This increases the efficiency and accuracy of disclosure of cases and prevents the spread of objectionable statements, as well as potential bad influence," the bureau noted.
AirDrop was widely used in 2019 during the Hong Kong protests — it only requires a Bluetooth connection. The service allows you to quickly exchange files, including images, documents and videos, between Apple devices. The company limited the feature to Chinese iPhones starting in 2022 after protesters used the service to distribute images to other owners of Apple devices.
This hacking method could help Chinese authorities further restrict information China deems harmful.
- In China, more and more agencies and state-owned companies are banning employees from bringing iPhones and other foreign gadgets to work. This may be the result of Beijingʼs campaign to abandon American technology in favor of the Chinese brand Huawei.
- Earlier, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for a "strong" barrier around the Chinese Internet for security. According to the Chinese leader, the Peopleʼs Republic of China should "observe the partyʼs control of the Internet and make the Internet work for the people."