China Successfully Cracks Apple AirDrop Encryption

China's Beijing Institute claims to have exploited flaws in Apple's AirDrop to identify iPhone users, a method backed up by security researchers who have warned Apple about the issues for years. The researchers found that sender details can be accessed from device logs, and while the information is stored in hash values, it can reportedly be deciphered. Apple has been questioned by researchers during the development of iOS 16, and a more secure version of AirDrop has been demonstrated but is yet to be implemented. Additionally, Apple has been granted a patent for a new version of AirDrop that would use light instead of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for faster and more secure file sharing.