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Reminds me of WhatsApp claiming it had encryption everywhere and then this [0] dropped. Except, in this case, I'm actually surprised. Didn't Apple publicly clai

Reminds me of WhatsApp claiming it had encryption everywhere and then this [0] dropped. Except, in this case, I'm actually surprised. Didn't Apple publicly claim that it wouldn't bow down to any demands from the agencies? [0]: https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3061660/whatsapp-is-storing-unencrypted-backup-data-on-google-drive https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3061660/whatsapp-i...

sneak 7y ago
That was a coordinated PR move between Apple and the government. The US administration went into heavy damage control mode with the large tech companies after the Snowden revelations about PRISM et c.
- snazz 7y ago
  Do you have any evidence for that? Sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me.
  - sneak 7y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/12/16/obama-to-meet-with-high-tech-ceos-on-healthcare-gov-nsa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/12... Put yourself in their shoes. These companies stand to lose tens or perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign sales if there isn’t a counter-narrative to “well of course they spy for their national military, just look at these Snowden slides”. Making it seem like they are fighting for their customers at odds with the FBI is a perfect counterpoint. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for US military intelligence, as evidenced by TFA. Excellent reporting!
  - tuldia 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Responses_to_disclosures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#R...
panarky 7y ago
It's mostly marketing bullshit. Apple and Microsoft both tried to build ad businesses, but when they weren't as successful as Google, they turned lemons into lemonade by launching data privacy PR campaigns against Google. Meanwhile, Apple and Microsoft quietly censor their products in China, surrender data to Chinese authorities, and now we find Apple is intentionally leaving iCloud data insecure. Presumably Google was under the same pressure from US law enforcement, but somehow Google delivered end-to-end encrypted Android backups in October, 2018. And Google did it without all of Apple's self-congratulatory media hoopla. e2ee: https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-have-your-back-by.html https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h... Third party security audit: https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/our-research/android-cloud-backuprestore/?research=Public+Reports https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/our-research/android-cloud-bac...
- meester_ben 7y ago
  "Apple is intentionally leaving iCloud data insecure" ... if you'd done some research you would know that iCloud backups are not end-to-end encrypted. That means you have a choice: backup to iCloud for the convenience and give up some privacy, or turn off the iCloud backup. It would be nice if Apple was more forthcoming with that fact but there is some onus on the customer these days to understand what's private and what is not. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 iCloud backups are not on the list of end-to-end encrypted.
  - mch82 7y ago
    Doesn’t that page show everything as end-to-end encrypted, except email messages on the server? If “backup”, photos, messages, contacts, calendars, iCloud Drive, notes, and safari data (and a few more) are end-to-end encrypted what else is there?
    - Despegar 7y ago
      I mean if you scroll down a little more you'll see what data is actually end-to-end encrypted.
dspillett 7y ago
> Didn't Apple publicly claim IIRC it said it wouldn't bow down on implementing back doors to unlock protected devices and encrypted content on them, which is specific enough not to cover this case. Bowing down on implementing new security features doesn't go against the promise to not bow down on the security of existing ones, as written. It can be argued to go against the spirit of the earlier public statement of course, but that doesn't count for much in the eyes of a corporation being given a strong suggestion by a government agency.
- tghw 7y ago
  Except that this is a backdoor that circumvents device protections for the vast majority of users.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    It is not a backdoor, nor does it circumvent anything. It is a front door convenience feature which has distinct privacy/security trade-offs. There exists no magical way to provide a means of lost password/device recovery which doesn’t grant Apple access to decrypt your data. It turns out that a lot of users want to have a way to recover from a lost device/password and are willing to let Apple decrypt their data. You do this by ticking the ‘iCloud Backups’ toggle on your iPhone. A backdoor by definition is not a user facing and configurable feature which is thoroughly explained in end-user documentation.
    - zzzcpan 7y ago
      > There exists no magical way to provide a means of lost password/device recovery which doesn’t grant Apple access to decrypt your data. In modern times your face and your fingerprints could be that magic.
      - zaroth 7y ago
        I’m not sure about that. Face and fingers are typically authentication mechanisms. They can grant access to a key, but they cannot themselves be the key. The thing doing the authentication can be your local device, or a cloud-device. That thing must necessarily store a validator for your face/fingerprints which it can use to decide your submitted capture is “close enough” to consider a match, after which it grants access to the key, usually indirectly, by allowing certain cryptographic operations with the key. Apple takes pains to ensure the biometric validators never leave the Secure Enclave of a local device. Possibly they could allow syncing these validators between Secure Enclaves of paired devices but I think you have to re-enroll. Absolutely never do they transmit these biometric validators to the Cloud in a readable form. So in a lost-device scenario, you are also losing the biometric validators as well as the keys which were unlocked by the validators. I think storing decryptable biometric validators is worse than storing decryptable device backups. Such a fingerprint database would almost certainly be abused by a government (forced to match a terrorist’s fingerprint against their users). The singular reason I am willing to use biometric authentication on my phone is because the authentication is done locally. For example Amazon’s recently announced project to link Amazon Pay to a palm print in stores is a total non-starter for me. Besides the fact that it’s a clumsy and bad idea to begin with, no way I want them having my palm print validator sitting in the Cloud.
mtgx 7y ago
Yeah, there's no way Google would have agreed to that deal to store all WhatsApp data for free unless they were getting full access to it for data mining.
OrgNet 7y ago
What Apple claims and do are two different things... just like politicians tend to do.
- azinman2 7y ago
  Not true. Disclaimer: I work for Apple.
  - RealStickman 7y ago
    Please elaborate
    - azinman2 7y ago
      Everything that happens internally has to be approved by privacy, it’s always part of every discussion (meaning it’s like you’d hope for). There’s no shortage of projects killed or altered because privacy said no. It’s not just marketing.
      - fc_barnes 7y ago
        But the marketing is nonetheless deceptive. Apple’s practices are much less stringent, and their cooperation with law enforcement much greater, than their marketing and even their privacy pages suggest. This is a crappy place to turn around and tell your customers, “should’ve read the fine print!”
        azinman2 7y ago
        If your threat model includes pointed requested from law enforcement, then you probably shouldn’t be using any consumer internet products wholesale.

sneak 7y ago

That was a coordinated PR move between Apple and the government. The US administration went into heavy damage control mode with the large tech companies after the Snowden revelations about PRISM et c.

snazz 7y ago
Do you have any evidence for that? Sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me.
- sneak 7y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/12/16/obama-to-meet-with-high-tech-ceos-on-healthcare-gov-nsa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/12... Put yourself in their shoes. These companies stand to lose tens or perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign sales if there isn’t a counter-narrative to “well of course they spy for their national military, just look at these Snowden slides”. Making it seem like they are fighting for their customers at odds with the FBI is a perfect counterpoint. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for US military intelligence, as evidenced by TFA. Excellent reporting!
- tuldia 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Responses_to_disclosures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#R...

panarky 7y ago

It's mostly marketing bullshit. Apple and Microsoft both tried to build ad businesses, but when they weren't as successful as Google, they turned lemons into lemonade by launching data privacy PR campaigns against Google. Meanwhile, Apple and Microsoft quietly censor their products in China, surrender data to Chinese authorities, and now we find Apple is intentionally leaving iCloud data insecure. Presumably Google was under the same pressure from US law enforcement, but somehow Google delivered end-to-end encrypted Android backups in October, 2018. And Google did it without all of Apple's self-congratulatory media hoopla. e2ee: https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-have-your-back-by.html https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h... Third party security audit: https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/our-research/android-cloud-backuprestore/?research=Public+Reports https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/our-research/android-cloud-bac...

meester_ben 7y ago
"Apple is intentionally leaving iCloud data insecure" ... if you'd done some research you would know that iCloud backups are not end-to-end encrypted. That means you have a choice: backup to iCloud for the convenience and give up some privacy, or turn off the iCloud backup. It would be nice if Apple was more forthcoming with that fact but there is some onus on the customer these days to understand what's private and what is not. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 iCloud backups are not on the list of end-to-end encrypted.
- mch82 7y ago
  Doesn’t that page show everything as end-to-end encrypted, except email messages on the server? If “backup”, photos, messages, contacts, calendars, iCloud Drive, notes, and safari data (and a few more) are end-to-end encrypted what else is there?
  - Despegar 7y ago
    I mean if you scroll down a little more you'll see what data is actually end-to-end encrypted.

dspillett 7y ago

> Didn't Apple publicly claim IIRC it said it wouldn't bow down on implementing back doors to unlock protected devices and encrypted content on them, which is specific enough not to cover this case. Bowing down on implementing new security features doesn't go against the promise to not bow down on the security of existing ones, as written. It can be argued to go against the spirit of the earlier public statement of course, but that doesn't count for much in the eyes of a corporation being given a strong suggestion by a government agency.

tghw 7y ago
Except that this is a backdoor that circumvents device protections for the vast majority of users.
- zaroth 7y ago
  It is not a backdoor, nor does it circumvent anything. It is a front door convenience feature which has distinct privacy/security trade-offs. There exists no magical way to provide a means of lost password/device recovery which doesn’t grant Apple access to decrypt your data. It turns out that a lot of users want to have a way to recover from a lost device/password and are willing to let Apple decrypt their data. You do this by ticking the ‘iCloud Backups’ toggle on your iPhone. A backdoor by definition is not a user facing and configurable feature which is thoroughly explained in end-user documentation.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    > There exists no magical way to provide a means of lost password/device recovery which doesn’t grant Apple access to decrypt your data. In modern times your face and your fingerprints could be that magic.
    - zaroth 7y ago
      I’m not sure about that. Face and fingers are typically authentication mechanisms. They can grant access to a key, but they cannot themselves be the key. The thing doing the authentication can be your local device, or a cloud-device. That thing must necessarily store a validator for your face/fingerprints which it can use to decide your submitted capture is “close enough” to consider a match, after which it grants access to the key, usually indirectly, by allowing certain cryptographic operations with the key. Apple takes pains to ensure the biometric validators never leave the Secure Enclave of a local device. Possibly they could allow syncing these validators between Secure Enclaves of paired devices but I think you have to re-enroll. Absolutely never do they transmit these biometric validators to the Cloud in a readable form. So in a lost-device scenario, you are also losing the biometric validators as well as the keys which were unlocked by the validators. I think storing decryptable biometric validators is worse than storing decryptable device backups. Such a fingerprint database would almost certainly be abused by a government (forced to match a terrorist’s fingerprint against their users). The singular reason I am willing to use biometric authentication on my phone is because the authentication is done locally. For example Amazon’s recently announced project to link Amazon Pay to a palm print in stores is a total non-starter for me. Besides the fact that it’s a clumsy and bad idea to begin with, no way I want them having my palm print validator sitting in the Cloud.

mtgx 7y ago

Yeah, there's no way Google would have agreed to that deal to store all WhatsApp data for free unless they were getting full access to it for data mining.

OrgNet 7y ago

What Apple claims and do are two different things... just like politicians tend to do.

azinman2 7y ago
Not true. Disclaimer: I work for Apple.
- RealStickman 7y ago
  Please elaborate
  - azinman2 7y ago
    Everything that happens internally has to be approved by privacy, it’s always part of every discussion (meaning it’s like you’d hope for). There’s no shortage of projects killed or altered because privacy said no. It’s not just marketing.
    - fc_barnes 7y ago
      But the marketing is nonetheless deceptive. Apple’s practices are much less stringent, and their cooperation with law enforcement much greater, than their marketing and even their privacy pages suggest. This is a crappy place to turn around and tell your customers, “should’ve read the fine print!”
      - azinman2 7y ago
        If your threat model includes pointed requested from law enforcement, then you probably shouldn’t be using any consumer internet products wholesale.