4 ms·
The last thing China wants during a trade war is to have the 3 million people in Apple's supply chain unemployed and angry. This particular leverage is also wh
by Despegar 7y ago
The last thing China wants during a trade war is to have the 3 million people in Apple's supply chain unemployed and angry.
This particular leverage is also why iMessage isn't blocked in China.
- fabianhjr 7y agoApple isn't the only company in China, plus they could buy-back or eminent domain closed factories and assign them to SOEs. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Foxconn#/Major_customers https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Foxconn#/Major_customers
- shshhdhs 7y agoMore likely because Apple gave China the master encryption keys: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/apple-moves-icloud-encryption-keys-for-chinese-users-to-china/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/apple-moves-icloud-encrypt...
- Despegar 7y agoiMessage is end-to-end encrypted.
- gsich 7y agoDoesn't matter if you backup messages to icloud.
- Despegar 7y agoThat's no different anywhere else in the world.
- opportune 7y agoiMessage is encrypted in transit and at rest. However, that doesn't matter if your attacker (the Chinese government) has the encryption keys
- graeme 7y agoThe article refers to icloud encryption keys, not imessage keys. If imessages are backed up to icloud, then the govt will have keys to see them. But if a user doesn't back up, I was under the impression not even apple could decrypt iMessages.
- opportune 7y agoCorrect, for data that isn't backed up, you would need to have root access to the user's device.
- cromwellian 7y agoiMessage (public) keys are "backed up" to IDS directory services. This is how Apple devices do key-exchange with one another. If there is no man-in-the-middle mitigation for IDS, then all the Chinese government needs to do is return spoofed keys for anyone you're communicating with. Remember, when you send messages to other people, you encrypt with THEIR key, not yours (on device). Your key is used for signatures and decrypting messages sent to you by them. THEIR Key comes from the cloud, and thus subject to attack if key exchange wasn't secure.
- cromwellian 7y agoIf you really believe that China doesn't have a deal with Apple that nerfs this in China, I have a bridge to sell you. China, a country which mandates spyware be installed on phones. Which uses deep packet inspection to block access to foreign websites, that bans VPNs in app stores. China, a country which forces the population of Xinjiang to install Jingwang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingwang_Weishi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingwang_Weishi), a spyware app so they can grab your on-device files. Which has deployed facial recognition cameras in many cities. Which blocked access to Wikipedi because it switched to HTTPS. That China, you think, is going to allow all of that to be circumvented just by buying an iPhone? Right. Chinese Government: "You're not allowed to use VPNs. But if you're in Xinjiang, and you need privacy, we recommend buying an iPhone, since it doesn't work with Jingwang, nor deep packet inspection. Just tell the police you have an iPhone, and we'll wave the usual regulations we impose on Android devices." Last time I was in Xinjiang, people there had iPhones. No one believes iMessage would be snoop proof.
- Despegar 7y agoIt doesn't matter what you believe because Apple said that was the case in court filings during the FBI legal fight. Tim Cook reaffirmed that in an interview with Vice last fall.
- hu3 7y agoSo they said and you believed.
- cromwellian 7y agoWhat Apple says about what they do in the US, and what they do in China, are two different things. And what Tim Cook reaffirmed is irrelevant, what matters is how the iMessage protocol works. As far as I can tell, the way iMessage works according to Apple's documentation, is that endpoints generate 1280-bit RSA encryption keys, hold the private keys on the device, but publish the public keys to a centralized IDS Directory Server. Note that their published security documents curiously don't say anything about man-in-the-middle mitigation, and indeed, MITM attacks against iMessage on IOS9 were publicly documented. Now, what do you know about where the IDS servers are located in China, and who controls them? Because if Apple doesn't control them, and control them in a way that makes them impossible to spoof, then it is easy for the Chinese government to attack iMessage. Thus, Tim Cook could say "We haven't put any backdoors into iMessage for the Chinese government and it is end to end encrypted" and it would be a true statement, but also Apple engineers could know full well the IDS in China could be subject to a MITM. A plausible way this could happen, after Apple moved the iCloud keys to China, is that the Chinese government could request to intercept communications from a particular user, and the public keys of every recipient that user communicates with could be replaced with a MITM key so they can rely the messages and see the unencrypted content. We don't know, but what we do know is that iMessage has been attacked with MITM before, and we know the PRC isn't going to let unbreakable encryption be sold to Uighurs in Xinjiang. It defies logic.
- parliament32 7y agoHow do you think iMessages are "restored" when you lose your iPhone and get a new one?
- opportune 7y agoiMessage isn't blocked in China because it doesn't need to be. China passed a law forcing Apple to put all Chinese users' iCloud data in a Chinese datacenter. Since Apple allows for account recovery, they store account keys in that datacenter. Anyone with privileged access to certain production resources in iCloud China should be able to access basically all Chinese users' data. The one exception is apparently Apple's keychain as per https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/01/16/icloud-in-china/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/01/16/icloud-i.... But, if the hardware used to enforce the security is different in China, even that could be cracked.
- xvector 7y agoIIUC if you disable iCloud backup of iMessages, you're safe here. This is because iMessage is E2EE enforced by the Secure Enclave when iCloud backup of iMessages is disabled.
- Mikeb85 7y ago> The last thing China wants during a trade war is to have the 3 million people in Apple's supply chain unemployed and angry. As an autocracy, China could easily compensate workers for any loss of work. But another obvious answer is that if Apple were banned in China, Huawei and Xiaomi would pick up the slack. If China really wanted to, they could shut down all iPhone production for the immediate future.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoIf China shut down apple then you would see company/capital flight from China like you've never before seen in history. The communist party is powerful but I doubt if they could handle a 20% spike in unemployment of some of the best jobs in the country.
- Tsubasachan 7y agoThe only thing the Chinese government has to do is explain that American imperialist white piggus are trying to destroy the Chinese people and they wouldn't even be lying for once. Nationalism is a play card in every country.
- tooltalk 7y agoApple's been losing marketshare (and unit sales) while Chinese domestic companies' market share has been growing, so that balances things out. The world's #1 smartphone maker Samsung moved much (50%>) of their smartphone assembly operation out of China and hardly anyone noticed it.
- ezconnect 7y agoOnce the population boycott a brand or a country the Chinese propaganda and people really do boycott them. Read the news about South Korea and Japan trade wars. The Chinese even tried to burn down a Toyota factory.
- noobermin 7y agoThey could still hazard it.