Apple’s Alleged Traps To Suss Leakers Out—From Font Tweaks To Missing Pixels

As you know, Apple loves to keep its secrets close to its chest. The company has warned employees that those who share confidential information won’t just risk losing their jobs but they could be arrested too. That hasn’t stopped details about forthcoming products from slipping through the cracks, however.

To identify staff, contractors, and partners who are leaking secrets, the Cupertino tech giant resorts to a number of tricks that help it locate where a breach has occurred, as shared by 9to5Mac. The news outlet’s Ben Lovejoy was compelled to pen a feature on these often-subtle techniques when he learned that an insider had deleted their Twitter account after allegedly being caught by Apple.

In the report, 9to5Mac notes that Apple often embeds internal documents with varied invisible watermarks. These can’t be seen by the naked eye, but can be flagged out digitally.

It also comes as no surprise that Apple may deliberately leak fake intel—like bogus dates, colors, or prices—or change up a minute detail in the specs (like f/1.76 instead of f/1.78) that might fall under the radar of somebody who isn’t working on that particular feature.

The company could choose to randomly insert italics or bold type into memos to give employees the sense that the documents are unique and trustworthy. For instance, it might publish messages like: “The iPhone 12 can capture Dolby Vision video.”

Then there are the sneakier changes, like leaving out a pixel from a single stroke of a letter, or increasing the font size of a document by a single pixel, shares Lovejoy, whose publication receives several leaks.

The occasional comma might be enough for the Silicon Valley behemoth to suss out informants to the outside world too. Take, for example, the sentence “This year, the iPhone 15 will be launched on Tuesday August 29 instead of the usual September timing,” as opposed to “This year, the iPhone 15 will be launched on Tuesday August 29, instead of the usual September timing.”

The write-up is pretty fascinating to read. You can head here to learn about the many other traps that Apple might set to catch leakers.

[via 9to5Mac, cover illustration 156741519 © Floaria Bicher | Dreamstime.com]