Hack in India: Faraday cage unlocks AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid function
Apple's Hearing Aid feature for its ANC earbuds is not yet available in all countries. Indian hobbyists have now solved the problem quite radically.
AirPods Pro 2: Special function thanks to firmware upgrade.
(Image: Apple)
Not every new function announced by Apple is available in all countries. In the EU, for example, this applies to Apple Intelligence, which will not be officially released until April. Other features, such as the much-heralded hearing aid function for the AirPods Pro 2, which was recently added to the earbuds via a firmware update, are also missing in some regions of the world. Three users from India, where the function has not yet been activated, have now developed a very special method to "help their grandmas", according to their own statements.
Please do not radio
As Rithwik Jayasimha, Arnav Bansal and Rithvik Vibhu report on Substack, one of them had just bought the AirPods Pro 2, only to discover that India is not yet one of the supported countries. Apple is implementing a geo-blocking system that is apparently multi-layered. There is a GET endpoint that determines the country via the server gspe1-ssl.ls.apple.com, the Apple Store region is queried (India prohibited) and apparently also the device region and possibly the time zone and language setting. Apple also appears to use GPS queries and queries from the mobile network (MCC/MNC).
Videos by heise
In order to enable the activation of the hearing aid function, the group used an iPad with WLAN, which does not require a mobile network. This was then packed into a (simplified) Faraday cage. In addition, a Wi-Fi spoofer in the form of an ESP32 was used, which sent SSIDs from California to the iPad (and was located in the Faraday cage), and an attempt was also made to manipulate the endpoint in question via a proxy and set it to "US" instead of "IN". After all these tricks, it was finally possible to unlock the hearing aid function; it remained usable even after activation.
There may be an easier way
The attempts are reminiscent of similar "hacks" by Apple Intelligence to unlock the AI system in the EU. Apple initially imposed tough restrictions here too, but these were eventually simplified – An App Store account from the USA with the appropriate US English language setting is now sufficient. Here, too, an iPad with Wi-Fi (and without 5G) was the solution – plus a Wi-Fi hotspot with an SSID that Apple's geodatabase could not (yet) recognize.
In addition, the setup had to be set up in an area where there were no other Wi-Fi networks so that the device could not assign the location. Incidentally, a Faraday cage is not absolutely necessary for this: iPads with WLAN only still do not have GPS; the location is determined solely via WLAN and Bluetooth.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externer Preisvergleich (heise Preisvergleich) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (heise Preisvergleich) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
(bsc)
