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Ex-Apple Engineer Says U.S. Government May Have Built a Top-Secret Geiger Counter Out of an iPod (gizmodo.com) 64

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2005, before the iPhone, Apple purportedly helped a U.S. Department of Energy contractor modify a 5th-generation iPod to secretly record and store data. The exact reason why remains a mystery, but an ex-Apple engineer involved in the project thinks it could have been a surreptitious Geiger counter. This bonkers story comes courtesy of David Shayer, a former Apple software engineer who was with the company for 18 years and worked on devices such as the iPod and Apple Watch. Shayer, who wrote the story for TidBITS, recounts a "gray day in late 2005" when his boss's boss, the director of iPod software, told him that he was assigned to a top-secret project with two engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a "special iPod." In actuality, the two engineers were from Bechtel, a U.S. defense contractor for the DOE. The request was to build a normal, functioning iPod that could also secretly record data onto custom hardware. In other words, some spy-level shit. At the time, the iPod wasn't a particularly easy device to modify. That's because according to Shayer, the iPod's operating system wasn't based on any other Apple operating system. Instead, it was based on a "reference platform Apple bought from a company called Portal Player" and cobbled together with code from Pixo, a company started by former Apple engineers who wrote a "general-purpose cell phone operating system." TL;DR -- the iPod OS was complicated, and there wasn't an easy way to figure out how it worked without help from Apple.
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Ex-Apple Engineer Says U.S. Government May Have Built a Top-Secret Geiger Counter Out of an iPod More

Ex-Apple Engineer Says U.S. Government May Have Built a Top-Secret Geiger Counter Out of an iPod

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  • A Geiger Counter is not that special (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @11:04AM (#60418627)

    In fact, you can buy the main components and finished devices without problems.

    • indeed, and there are plenty of pocket radiation detectors with more range than a geiger counter. People don't understand the GC is for relatively small amounts of radiation, such as seeing if you have contaminated dirt on you, or perhaps as the joke goes if you're prospecting for uranium. For heavier rad situations you need a survey meter which doesn't have a geiger-muller tube. A geiger counter would get saturated in such a situation and show a very low reading, they're actually dangerous then!

    • Yes but taking a Geiger counter into locations where you might be searched and have it taken away like north Korea isn't so easy.

      • I doubt you can get into North Korea with an iPad or any Device. Without it taken away and carefully inspected. Heck they inspect your device and give you a different one with all the "Approved" Software on it.

        • I doubt you can get into North Korea with an iPad or any Device. Without it taken away and carefully inspected. Heck they inspect your device and give you a different one with all the "Approved" Software on it.

          You can certainly take an iPad or pretty much any portable consumer electronic device into North Korea no problem.. and though they would give it a quick check over to look for any subversive content, they would be highly unlikely to notice if it had been modified internally. They certainly don't give you another device!

      • Re: A Geiger Counter is not that special (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @01:19PM (#60419189) Homepage
        I suspect it more likely this might have been used in Iran than the DPRK. Stuxnet was discovered in 2010, but thought to have been in developement since 2005, which puts it into the right timeframe. An Iranian nuclear lab staffer with a blackmarket iPod (both countries were subject to US embargos at the time) also seems much more plausible given the US military was quite busy on either side of Iran at the time, compared to one finding its way into the hands of their DPRK equivalent when you consider that the latter would probably be far more likely to have a knock-off from neighbouring China.

        If we assume that Natanz security might have been checking for cameras, phones, etc. at the gate, but that a harmless MP3 player would be (or was known to be) more likely to be permitted through, then it all fits together quite nicely. If you could get some asset to take this device into the enrichment facility and check how radioactive some samples are then, when it turned they're further along than people suspected, then the next step might be to throw a spanner in the works... say, but spinning up some centrifuges beyond their rated RPMs?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          but that a harmless MP3 player would be (or was known to be) more likely to be permitted through

          5th gen iPods have cameras. So a pretty poor choice to try and sneak into a secure site. Even if it's an unmodified one.

          • Re: A Geiger Counter is not that special (Score:5, Informative)

            by Hall ( 962 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @02:35PM (#60419515)

            5th gen iPods have cameras. So a pretty poor choice to try and sneak into a secure site. Even if it's an unmodified one.

            No they don't. You probably are thinking of 5th-gen iPod touch devices. I have an iPod "Classic" 5th-generation myself with 60gb storage just like the ones discussed in the story.

        • Natanz was an IAEA monitored site, they had video cameras there recording the activity [wired.com], which is how the unusual swap-out rate of centrifuges was first noticed. They didn't need to take a sikrit CIA mind-control iPod in there to see whether there was radioactivity when it was publicly acknowledged and monitored via video surveillance.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
      Yeah, I don't see the big deal. As an EE this is something that many students build as a project.

      In fact it may be possible to do it "really on the cheap" with a small bit of scintillating material over the camera and some software. For the adventurous who want to dip into USB-C stuff you could make one that plugs into the USB port of a phone and draws power from the phone battery. I think the biggest challenge engineering something like this would be the plastics, LOL.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by 1s44c ( 552956 )

        Ipod, not iphone. No camera. No USB-C. No GPS. No outside communication. These things were built to be as small as possible and already had a magnetic HDD and a battery in the case. The software was an utter mess.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          So, some embedded coding and a miniaturized Geiger-Mueller tube and electronics. Still not that special. And not that useful either.

          • . And not that useful either.

            Who know what the deep state finds useful.

          • I could think of two immediate scenarios. First, you have access to a location where you suspect nuke materials might exist, but can't or don't want to be seen waving a detector around. Second, you have access to a person and you suspect they might be working with nuke materials, so you plant a detector on them. At the time this was taking place, ipods were pretty common and since they normally have no recording capabilities they were often allowed into secured areas, and wouldn't arouse suspicion if you ca

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
          Fair enough.

          I don't really know Apple stuff (I've never owned their mobile devices). The article said that it had a different OS. I'm guessing the SoC still has USB on it somewhere even if the pins go nowhere. As for the coding - my limited experience tinkering with the iOS simulator on a hackintosh makes me think much of Apple's code that didn't come from FreeBSD is basically a mess.

        • My guess would be you pick a particular menu option or song to play and it starts recording data from the geiger tube. In it's simplest form a geiger tube produces a pulse when it senses radiation. So all you have to do is record the number of pulses and what the time span was.

      • Re:A Geiger Counter is not that special (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @12:16PM (#60418953)

        Yeah, I don't see the big deal. As an EE this is something that many students build as a project.

        Really, many EE students build Geiger counters into old iPods, including integration with the iPod software, and still maintaining the iPod functionality? I find that pretty hard to believe.

        • The circuit itself is pretty simple. You can build one with a few transistors and a choke for the high voltage.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            OK, fine, build me one. In an iPod. With the software integrated with the iPod software and keep the iPod fully functional. Go on, I'll wait.

            • With Apple's engineers involved I'm sure it wasn't that crazy.

            • OK, fine, build me one. In an iPod. With the software integrated with the iPod software and keep the iPod fully functional. Go on, I'll wait.

              The whole story strikes me as an example of how bad the spy agencies are at their jobs. There's no reason whatsoever that there should have been integrated software in the first place. The whole circuit should have been parasitic on the battery and maybe the clock and that's all. 1 GB NAND flash chips were introduced to retail in 2005. To the radiation counter circuitry you add a controller and a flash chip and as long as the device has power, it's writing the current reading and a timestamp to that fla

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )
      That was the thought the iPod software engineer who had no actual knowledge of what they were making and anytime he asked for more detail, the actual engineers working on it changed subjects. So, while he was probably totally wrong with the precise device, he was plausibly in the ball park.

    • The engineer only thought it was a gieger counter. That may have been what he was told for the exact reason that it doesn't sound that surreptitious. Presumably the bit the MoD needed help with was patching the OS so that it would quietly log the data on the iPod drive and allow it to be accessed later - remember this was before you could just stick a tiny 1GB FLASH memory chip in everything - the iPod hard drive was cutting edge itself and it would have been an extremely good base if you wanted to log lots

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, yes. But the story makes it sound like a Geiger counter would be a big deal.

      • The engineer only thought it was a gieger counter. That may have been what he was told for the exact reason that it doesn't sound that surreptitious. Presumably the bit the MoD needed help with was patching the OS so that it would quietly log the data on the iPod drive and allow it to be accessed later -

        It was the DOE, not Defense. DOE does non-proliferation for the US government, and might find such a device useful for their inspectors, or for use by friendly nation inspectors when they visit sites. Sure, it could also have been a cover, such as mining mineral nodules in the deep ocean.

    • The value here is counting geigers in a mobile way without the person knowing. Plat the iPOD on a person of interest going to russia and they could count geigers in say......any where to determine how many geigers where there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      In fact, you can buy the main components and finished devices without problems.

      Yea, but jamming one inside an iPod, and having it collect data WHILE maintaining the iPod functionality is a bit special. Even the OG iPods weren't exactly roomy inside to begin with.

    • In fact, you can buy the main components and finished devices without problems.

      Will it look like an Ipod?

      You have to ask, why wouldn't they just use a regular geiger counter? The answer is, for a covert operation to find nuclear material. It's a Q gadget. [wikipedia.org]

    • In fact, you can buy the main components and finished devices without problems.

      Ah, but one that you can carry around in a foreign country without looking like your checking for radiation in areas that might have hidden nuclear research labs would be much more useful to a government agency.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        In fact, you can buy the main components and finished devices without problems.

        Ah, but one that you can carry around in a foreign country without looking like your checking for radiation in areas that might have hidden nuclear research labs would be much more useful to a government agency.

        A Geiger counter is not really suitable for that unless they have extremely bad safety.

  • "Back in 2005, before the iPhone, Apple purportedly helped a U.S. Department of Energy contractor modify a 5th-generation iPod to secretly record and store data. "

    So music and cover art ain't no data, good to know. We even used a cassette deck to store data with C64 or PET before the iPod or the PC was even invented.

  • Apple releases iPod [slashdot.org]

    Hard to believe that story was posted 19 years ago.

    • Also at this time, we Assumed Apple would go out of business within a few years. Their iMacs and Powerbooks would be their last horaa.

      If Microsoft didn't stay on XP for so long and with Vista being so bad. Apple could had ended up that way.
      The iPod was a toy just for the Mac User. If Apple, Sony and Microsoft had even the slightest game plans changes it could be a different story.

      • The ipod was not a toy for a mac user, it was for an entirely new market segment.

        No one remembers the Zune? MSFT tried (which I agree that they failed at that time in many market segments; ivory tower syndrome or whatever), but Apple had designs that "regular" people liked. This was before mass fanboyism, but eventually fueled it.

  • they should be fired.

    Yeah, I get the idea of sending agents with innocuous looking devices, but that should at best be labelled Confidential.

    What you think the Terrorists are just going to say "Hey, let's take all the devices from this guy except his Ipad. He might get bored." No, anybody that can take away a normal Geiger counter is not going to let you walk around with any electronic device.

    In fact, the government should have a Samsung Geiger Counter, a Nokia Geiger Counter, and even a Blackberry Geiger

    • Consider a person going somewhere are not wanting others to know he is counting geigers. Like visiting a foreign leaders home or lab.

      • I am not saying they should advertise it, but this is not a 'top secret'. Confidential is enough.

  • Imagine all the current still classified devices out there....

  • Bechtel (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @12:32PM (#60419031)
    Calling Bechtel a DOD and DOE contractor is really not doing them justice. They are a huge engineering and construction firm with projects all over the world. The timing of this all is really interesting too. After 9/11, the CIA spun up a NOC program, recruiting business and engineering graduates to train and place with US companies (usually only a couple of C-levels knew what was up, and the agent's salary would get funneled back to the company behind the scenes) with overseas operations. The idea being they could use these companies as cover to get people into positions in countries they needed agents in. By day, the agent does their job, and on their down time, they do their other job.

    It was a total flop, with very few of the agents accomplishing anything useful and it burned billions in budget. The whole thing was shutdown in 2010 i believe. But 2005 would have been right at the start of it, and Bechtel would be an ideal candidate company to use.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "Do you have a Geiger counter?" "Mine is in the shop, and I will probably never get it back because I don't have the money to pay for first-party parts to repair it."

  • "Is that a Geiger counter in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

  • I believe this is a device built to isolate conversations between women, determine if those women have names, and snoop on the conversation to see whether it's about a man or not.

    Progressive goal, but still a privacy breach.

  • FYI, this was confirmed by Tony Fadell

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