Apple advances user security with powerful new data protections

[Zodiark1593]

2 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Oh yea, but it's getting to the point that it's just a click away essentially.  I think it's a good thing having more encryption and such, but I do feel that it will have to come up as a discussion point eventually in the modern world whether we are okay with it (and not being able to compel someone for a password).

 

Varying other countries have weighed in to varying results. The UK already has a Key Disclosure Law on the books, for example. In the US however, the 5th Amendment doesn't leave a lot of room open for discussion, and is pretty clear. "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..."

 

Definition of a witness is "one that gives evidence".

[wanderingfool2]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yeah, I remember when that feature was added and I enabled it that there was a compromise on security there. The convenience was worth it though. Now it's not a problem. 

yea, I'll agree with that with ADP that doesn't exist.  It was just backwards logic by Apple for offering "E2EE" messages...unless you choose to backup, then we'll store the keys for you.  The concept of E2EE backups have been long overdue.

 

Then again, can't really blame Apple too much either for that one.  It's to prevent what's going to happen with ADP, someone is going to forget their password (think using faceID to unlock and never really using a pin to unlock, I've seen this happen before on a few occasions).

 

I'm actually curious at how they are implementing recovery, say your phone was smashed beyond repair.  I doubt people will keep the recovery key safe, at which point people will be in for a rude awakening when that happens.

[Fasterthannothing]

19 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Apple has never stored or handed the encryption keys over to any government agency in the past. When Apple has complied with requests for data in the past, it was because that data was not encrypted on iCloud. Now that the data can be encrypted, there is nothing to hand over to authorities. 

Yeah nope totally don't let their data sit on Chinese servers which requires by Chinese law all Chinese authorities to have access to and their encryption keys.

 

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/apples-chinese-data-centers-store-encryption-keys-in-same-facility-as-user-data/

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

Yeah nope totally don't let their data sit on Chinese servers which requires by Chinese law all Chinese authorities to have access to and their encryption keys.

China is China is China. I don't live in China. I wish China had a less oppressive government. I don't particularly care that Apple does buisness there and changes data policies so they can do buisness in that market. Does that show a lack of a principled stance? Probably. Again, I don't care. None of that affects how my data is handled here in the States. 

[AnonymousGuy]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I very much consider Apple to be a company that treats you as a product.  They leverage you as a product to maintain their App Store fees, they leverage you for their advertising (except in this case since they pretty much blocked the competitors from being effective, they now have a lot strong monopoly for ads on iPhones).

This is basically whataboutism that also demonstrates you aren't an Apple customer and/or aren't aware of their actual practices. 

 

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-delivers-advertising-to-you-iphf60a6a256/ios

 

Go read through that.  Google's stock would drop 20% the same day they implemented any of it.  Apple goes so far as to make their OWN services worse in the interest of privacy.

[DrMacintosh]

32 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Apple goes so far as to make their OWN services worse in the interest of privacy.

Example: Siri. She does not listen or monitor you like Alexa. The trade off means she's much worse. 

[Dracarris]

7 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

If the FBI is worried about Apple implementing this, I think its safe to say nobody is bluffing. 

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/08/fbi-privacy-groups-icloud-encryption/

My comment was in response to this. This very thing could be a bluff.

5 hours ago, NastyFlytrap said:

And lets not forget that anything and everything you upload to their servers will be shared amongst ALL of their cloud locations around the world.
That includes china.

Pretty hard doubt on that. Why should they mirror US/EU/anyone-not-China to Chinese servers? Source?

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

My comment was in response to this. This very thing could be a bluff.

Pretty hard doubt on that. Why should they mirror US/EU/anyone-not-China to Chinese servers? Source?

If you travel to china and then download data from iCloud it might be mirrored to the local CDN (so that you have faster access).  (also so that you can access it as the firewall might well not permit direct remove access) but with full end to end encryption that is not a big deal. 

 

 

1 hour ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Go read through that.  Google's stock would drop 20% the same day they implemented any of it.  Apple goes so far as to make their OWN services worse in the interest of privacy.

It all comes down to how you make money.  Google need access to your data to justify providing you massive amounts of free storage and free services (including developing android). Apple on the other hand charge a high price for thier hardware, and App Store fees etc to (more than) cover software R&D and also provide a very small amount of free iCloud space then charging quite a high rate for more storage. So for apple econmicly it is better for them if more users use iCloud even if apple cant read the data were for google if more people use google photos without google being able to read the data then google would start making a massive loss. 

 

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm actually curious at how they are implementing recovery, say your phone was smashed beyond repair.  I doubt people will keep the recovery key safe, at which point people will be in for a rude awakening when that happens.

I expect this might well use the recovery contact system they have been building out in the last few years were you can delicate a contact (someone else with an Apple ID) as your final recovery.  So in the case were you loos everything as long as your recovery contact can be trusted (and has to lost everything) you can get back in. I think that is already they case for the existing End to End encrypted bits such as keychain and HomeKit secure video etc.  I could see Apple requiring you to set this up, or pushing you very hard to have it setup before letting you continue. 

 

[DrMacintosh]

On 12/7/2022 at 4:38 PM, suicidalfranco said:

Hey Apple: what about China?

Apple intends to roll out these features globally. I have started this YouTube Video where craig addresses this. 

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

This is basically whataboutism that also demonstrates you aren't an Apple customer and/or aren't aware of their actual practices. 

 

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-delivers-advertising-to-you-iphf60a6a256/ios

 

Go read through that.  Google's stock would drop 20% the same day they implemented any of it.  Apple goes so far as to make their OWN services worse in the interest of privacy.

You are comparing then to Google as the argument as the argument that "you are not the product".  That is the whataboutism trying to compare it like that.  You can still be the product, even if you deem what the competition does is "worse".

 

Apple has already been caught sending back data to their servers, even when the options for analytics are turned off.  I view any company that locks you into an eco-system so it's a real pain to leave as "You are the product".  They just monetize it using other methods.  You can also see the progression of data collection and advertising.

 

4 hours ago, hishnash said:

I expect this might well use the recovery contact system they have been building out in the last few years were you can delicate a contact (someone else with an Apple ID) as your final recovery.  So in the case were you loos everything as long as your recovery contact can be trusted (and has to lost everything) you can get back in. I think that is already they case for the existing End to End encrypted bits such as keychain and HomeKit secure video etc.  I could see Apple requiring you to set this up, or pushing you very hard to have it setup before letting you continue. 

Yea, perhaps.  There is still going to be a lot of people that end up kind of trapped though, will be interesting when starting to see the major threads demanding Apple unlock their data (despite it being out of Apples hands).

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Apple intends to roll out these features globally. I have started this YouTube Video where craig addresses this. 

Suure we we're definitely going to push this works wide, why start only with China at a time were the using this feature, specially for our slaves factory workers who have been also protesting instead of producing more phone, is paramount to show the world their struggle. Yes, why did we release it here first supposedly a whole year before anyone else?

Definitely not because of what's happening there currently: no, no, no.

Trust us. We are the privacy focused company.

[LAwLz]

Oh boy. A thread about Apple doing something good. I can't wait for people to talk about these new technologies, how they work, and maybe the pros and cons of them. 

 

 

Oh never mind. Most of the thread is just people saying they don't like Apple. Hell, most people in the thread isn't even talking about the news at all. It seems like people just saw "Apple" in the title and felt compelled to tell everyone how they don't like Apple and that "Apple bad". 

 

 

I think this forum is in an incredibly sad state right now. It's just a bunch of fanboys who either loves or hates a company, and will shout out their completely black and white opinions every time they see a brand mentioned. Is this really how we want the forum to be? 

 

 

Anyway, I think these are great news and long overdue. Good job Apple. 

[Montana One-Six]

22 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

iMessage Contact Key Verification will probably throw a massive wrench in trying to impersonate or otherwise spoof/infiltrate/compromise an iMessage conversation. iMessage is about as safe as it gets. I'd like to see someone try to break through it. 

No. I know of print outs of chats from iMessage which were in the hands of some agency and shown to people during some interviews. So no I wouldn't say its that save.

 

22 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Depending on what is being conveyed and what is at risk, I’d probably lean towards Signal with my own server setup over using iMessage. 

22 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Signal is great, however I know roughly 0 people that use it. It is a perfectly fine and secure platform as far as I'm concerned though.

Don't know much about Signal but if I had to bet on it I wouldn't bet that it is secure. Pretty much all major messengers (a few of which I know for certain) aren't so why exactly should this one be? I mean even tor isn't really secure anymore.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

No. I know of print outs of chats from iMessage which were in the hands of some agency and shown to people during some interviews. So no I wouldn't say its that save.

Source?

 

 

2 hours ago, NastyFlytrap said:

Your data is available anywhere in the world.

The data is stored in the cloud (mostly)

So its available on all of their servers? I very much doubt you'd be accessing an american server if you were say on vacation in europe, or in china, for some reason.

Hence my argument. Now do your thing and put holes in it.

That is actually how it works (you accessing an American server while on vacation in Europe or China).

Apple doesn't keep a copy of all data on all regions. In fact, doing so would go against several legislations such as GDPR. 

 

What MIGHT happen is that if I were to take a European iPhone (which I don't have) to the US and decided to upload some photos, those photos may end up on the US server while I am there (since it's the closest server). But it's not like Apple for no reason moves data to a different data center region and spreads the data out for fun. It doesn't really make sense to think they do either, unless you yourself is accessing the data while in a different country.

Apple won't move all your data from their EU servers to the US server just because I MIGHT need to access it either. If I am in the US and tries to access data I uploaded in EU, chances are very high that I will be calling to the EU server rather than the US server. At least the first time I am accessing the data. 

The same goes for all cloud providers. 

 

I got over 14,000 pictures saved in Google photos. Google doesn't move those pictures from their EU servers to their Japan servers just because they think or know I am visiting Japan for a week. That would be extremely wasteful processing wise, and it would potentially break laws. 

[Paul Thexton]

On 12/8/2022 at 7:29 PM, wanderingfool2 said:

Under the current aspect of the law you can't compel someone to give up their password.

Think yourself lucky in that regard, the uk has the following abomination on the current active legislature for example

 

https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/03/ripa-decryption_keys_power/

 

Uk isn’t the only country either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

[Paul Thexton]

On 12/8/2022 at 10:12 PM, DrMacintosh said:

Signal is great, however I know roughly 0 people that use it. It is a perfectly fine and secure platform as far as I'm concerned though. 

I and most of my friends moved to Signal when the whole “sign the new T&Cs or lose your account” thing happened on WhatsApp. 

[Zodiark1593]

4 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

 

 

Don't know much about Signal but if I had to bet on it I wouldn't bet that it is secure. Pretty much all major messengers (a few of which I know for certain) aren't so why exactly should this one be? I mean even tor isn't really secure anymore.

Both client and server software for Signal are open source, and the protocol has been subjected to security audits, with rather positive results. 

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Source?

If you use the ADP then law enforcement can't do that.  If you don't use ADP and you use iCloud backup then they can access your iMessage messages.

 

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202303

 

Note number 6, they keys to iMessage will be stored in the backup (which is not E2EE).  So it's most likely that law enforcement one time or another requested iMessage data and got that from Apple.  A specific case being https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/02/15/when-imessages-arent-private-government-raids-apple-icloud-in-a-dark-web-drug-investigation/

 

5 hours ago, Paul Thexton said:

Think yourself lucky in that regard, the uk has the following abomination on the current active legislature for example

 

https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/03/ripa-decryption_keys_power/

 

Uk isn’t the only country either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

I'm meh on it really.  I know it wouldn't happen in North America really, but if the laws are written correctly and in a manor that makes the expansion of them nearly impossible (like modifying the 5th amendment) I have no issue.  To be clear, I'm talking about a theoretical where it's changed and actually written correctly, which in itself would be unlikely.

 

In general though, in regards to the laws my personal belief is that a judicial warrant should be able to compel you to provide access (not necessarily even the password, but access) and the warrant would need to be specific of the crime they suspect.  That way even if a warrant is issued but it turns out you were committing other crimes then it can't be used against you (fruit of the poisoned tree).  If lets say a judge was too caviler in issuing the warrant, then you could challenge it when they attempt to prosecute you and then all the evidence is again poisoned and can't be used against you.

[Deadendking]

On 12/8/2022 at 3:09 AM, DrMacintosh said:

I have always believed that Apple is a leader in consumer data protections.

I personally do not trust ANYONE or ANY company with my data.
The only place that you can be sure (still not 100%) that is safe for your data is your offline local storage.something like a personal storage like hard drive or a home NAS or something
the worst thing about apple in specific is that they are a closed company with closed sourced softwares, and they basically created a monopoly and always try to lock their customers in their "Ecosystem" as they say it makes them one of the worst in my opinion as they try to control everything tech related from one person.
At least with a shitty company like Facebook (or meta) they say this in your face that we are data sellers for money and you can delete and stop using their services.
But with apple its more scary cause you do not know what information they are exactly getting from you and how they are getting it.

On 12/8/2022 at 3:09 AM, DrMacintosh said:

To further demonstrate how serious this is, the FBI is worried that Apple is implementing these features. The FBI provided multiple statements on the subject:

Please do not get fooled, these statements are nothing

apple recently restricted airdrop first in china after the people protested against their government
this is definitely not a coincidence and apple is working with Chinese government to restrict their people even more.
Link to the article:https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/apple-limited-a-crucial-airdrop-function-in-china-just-weeks-before-protests.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to hate on apple or anything but when i see people think this company is different or that company is trusty i get upset because this means all the money that they have spent on advertisements and propaganda is working

[wanderingfool2]

45 minutes ago, Deadendking said:

don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to hate on apple or anything but when i see people think this company is different or that company is trusty i get upset because this means all the money that they have spent on advertisements and propaganda is working

I mean, when it comes to government laws it really shouldn't really be blamed on Apple.  Like I'm guessing (just a guess) that they don't advertise all the "privacy" features of the iPhone in China.

 

They are simply hitting a market, whether Apple is in the market or not smartphones will still exist there (and have the same government limitations, maybe even worse).

 

What is telling is what a company does when they aren't restricted by laws though and how they act.

[Deadendking]

6 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I mean, when it comes to government laws it really shouldn't really be blamed on Apple.  Like I'm guessing (just a guess) that they don't advertise all the "privacy" features of the iPhone in China.

 

They are simply hitting a market, whether Apple is in the market or not smartphones will still exist there (and have the same government limitations, maybe even worse).

 

What is telling is what a company does when they aren't restricted by laws though and how they act.

Yeah, I get what you are saying, and it's right, we don't know if they advertise these same features in that region as well.
But they should not be described as a "privacy focused" company too based on behaviors like this.
and be 100% sure that there are politics involved in the decision to release this so called "feature" in china first as there are protests going on there against the goverment.
But what I mean is no matter how a company tells you that they are good and always care about you at the end they are FORCED to do what the government says in said region.
So if someday in for example USA comes a Law that tells every company that they have to report about their users to places like FBI they will do it, and they DO NOT care about their customers at all.

[hishnash]

11 minutes ago, Deadendking said:

So if someday in for example USA comes a Law that tells every company that they have to report about their users to places like FBI they will do it, and they DO NOT care about their customers at all.

Well the alternative is leaving the market. If you have a black and white ruling like that you either stop selling products in that category in that market or comply.  Or you find a way around it.

End to end encryption I such a tool.. apple have used this for some of th iCloud data for many years, data such as Health, HomeKit Keychain have been end to end encyrpted since they were released and it so turns out that china has not forced apple (or others that operate such end to end services) to stop supporting them.  So moving to end to end encryption (and in general moving from server side to client side operations, with the added complexities this brings) is one of the key ways around things.

It is rather easy for governments (US, UK... China etc) to make demands about data stored on a server. It is a much bigger ask to demand that the software shipped to users phones be modified to not support end to end encryption.  

 

The entier image scanning before being uploaded to iCloud feature was an attempt to ensure regulators did no pass some law that compelled them to scan server side (thus making it impossible for them to do client side end to end).There have been multiple nations that have talked about laws that would make a company who stores such images culpable unless they do a best effort to ensure such images do not end up on thier servers. 

[Deadendking]

7 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Well the alternative is leaving the market.

China has a big market so this is out of the question.
 

 

9 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Or you find a way around it

i believe this is not possible in china cause i dont think they are allowed to use imessage or whatsapp or telegram and other worldwide popular messaging apps as they are restricted there.
end to end encryption is a very good thing though, but it just locks the data that is being send between your phone or pc to the server, whether its apple, facebook or google.
so in the end these companies still have access to your data.

[wanderingfool2]

2 minutes ago, Deadendking said:

end to end encryption is a very good thing though, but it just locks the data that is being send between your phone or pc to the server, whether its apple, facebook or google.
so in the end these companies still have access to your data.

So generally when people talk about end to end encryption companies won't have access to your data, what you described is just regular encryption.  The link I posted earlier, I think shows it off quite nicely.

 

Currently under Apple backups are encrypted, where the keys are stored with Apple.  It means Apple is capable of decrypting the backup.

With the new program they are introducing they are using end to end encryption.  Those keys are stored in a way that only you can access them.  e.g. They could use AES 256 encryption with your password to encrypt the keys.

 

While they may store the encrypted key on their server, they will have no way of actually accessing that key (as you are the only one who knows that password to decrypt it).  Although even in this case it might only be stored on the device.  Either way Apple can't decrypt the data.

 

36 minutes ago, Deadendking said:

But they should not be described as a "privacy focused" company too based on behaviors like this.

Well I mean things are black and white really when it comes to things like this though.  I am coming from a viewpoint that Apple still treats you as the product, but that doesn't mean they don't to an extent have privacy focused.  I do think they have major privacy issues that should effectively disqualify themselves as privacy focused, but in general again when it comes to enforcing laws they can't really do much and I don't expect them to.  It's all a balance act really.

 

It's like some of the companies who are trying to "go green".  They can try their best to reduce emissions, switch to EV's and such...but ultimately if they have to drive in areas without power they will have to settle on ICE vehicles in their fleet.  That doesn't mean they aren't trying to be "green", it just means sometimes it's not practical.

 

I view Apple more along the lines that some of the "privacy" aspects just happen to align with the way they are intending to profit off the customers, so it's a good advertising for them to make people think they care about privacy, but that isn't to say that companies like Google are typically worse in some aspects of privacy.

[LAwLz]

On 12/10/2022 at 12:15 AM, wanderingfool2 said:

If you use the ADP then law enforcement can't do that.  If you don't use ADP and you use iCloud backup then they can access your iMessage messages.

 

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202303

 

Note number 6, they keys to iMessage will be stored in the backup (which is not E2EE).  So it's most likely that law enforcement one time or another requested iMessage data and got that from Apple.  A specific case being https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/02/15/when-imessages-arent-private-government-raids-apple-icloud-in-a-dark-web-drug-investigation/

I don't think anyone is saying the messages won't be extractable from an iCloud backup. 

But the person I was replying to said that no chat program is secure.

 

The key to iMessage conversations being stored in iCloud backups is an issue with iCloud, not iMessage itself. I think, and would like some clarification, on Montana's statement that seems to be "law enforcement is able to break the chat encryption of iMessage itself, without using iCloud backups". 

 

He also said that law enforcement do not need help from Apple or any other company to break encrypted chats. If he meant "by using the key stored in iCloud, they can read messages" I don't think he would have said the things he said earlier, about law enforcement not needing help from Apple, and that it applies to all chat apps, not just iMessage. 

 

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Edited December 11, 2022 by SansVarnic
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