10 ms·
Crouching T2, Hidden Danger
- gambiting 6y agoWhile as always, I love reading about hacking efforts on every front, this part: >> This could be used to e.g. circumvent activation lock, allowing stolen iPhones or macOS devices to be reset and sold on the black market. Is making me very sad. As someone who had things stolen in the past, thieves are the scum of the earth - I was hoping that the implementation of lock on apple devices would be a major roadblock to theft.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- varispeed 6y agoIt is one of the manipulation techniques used to convince people they should trade freedom to use their devices however they want for notion of security. Apple is known for opposing right to repair initiatives and prefer that faulty devices would rather be destroyed than repaired.
- gambiting 6y agoIt's an interesting balance though. On one hand I don't want a thief(or anyone) to be able to use my device after it's stolen, it should be literally impossible for anyone to unlock that device, ever. On the other hand, I'm not happy with Apple positioning themselves where they are, aggressively going after independent repair shops and not selling spare parts. Can we have it both ways? I don't know.
- ben-schaaf 6y agoApple have the keys that let them control hardware pairing and firmware updates, you can have those same keys in an open ecosystem with open hardware where you can be in control of those keys. You can absolutely have it both ways.
- acdha 6y agoHow do you believe that would work? Do you think the average person is capable of operating a robust PKI management system? I want to like the idea but it seems most likely that this would just mean people having the keys on the device which was stolen (because they don't have redundant storage in a separate location), having a compromise mean that someone now has persistent control of all of your devices, and a spike in the kind of social engineering attacks we saw in the desktop space for decades where someone convinces the user to compromise their security because 99.99% of people using computers do not have the experience needed to understand the security decisions they're being asked to make.
- varispeed 6y agoI think people should accept the fact of life that stolen goods will be used one way or another anyway. I think good compromise is to make sure phone reset wipes all data irrecoverably. Rather than fighting the effect, maybe we should address why people steal and why government is ineffective at catching them (but seems to be doing just fine catching students relaxing with a wrong kind of plant)
- libertine 6y agoNow this poses the question - if they made such security claims regarding the T2 chip, and if the T2 is effectively unsecure and unpatchable, are people who have devices with Apple T2 entitled to a refund, or at least compensation? Didn't this become false advertising?
- joosters 6y agoPoint me at some of this 'false advertising' then, please? No-one (at least, no-one reputable) claims that anything is 100% secure. You'll only hear that a product feature makes it 'more secure'. And that's still (slightly) true, since you could reasonably argue: 1) Even with an exploit, hackers have to do some extra work to bypass the feature. 2) The product was more secure for a time, until the exploit was discovered.
- dahfizz 6y ago> Didn't this become false advertising? I don't think this counts as false advertising. "False advertising" is the colloquial phrase but the actual law uses terms like "misleading" or "deceptive": > The FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. That is, advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers. A claim can be misleading if relevant information is left out or if the claim implies something that's not true[1]. So maybe if Apple made some very strong statements to the tune of "This T2 chip will absolutely never ever be hacked, its impossible", that might be misleading. I suspect the Apple legal team is a little more clever than that, though. General marketing fluff like "This car is good, you should buy this car" doesn't count as false advertising if your car breaks down. I think this falls into that category. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/adv...
- xoa 6y ago>It is one of the manipulation techniques used to convince people they should trade freedom to use their devices however they want for notion of security. No, it absolutely is not. It is a 100% genuine trade off, and you are being deceptive out of your own personal interests if you lie and claim it isn't. The ability to do anything necessarily means the ability to do bad things, and the more power is available the more work, knowledge, and metaknowledge is needed to both make full use of it and avoid pitfalls. Software lockdowns prevent power users like the typical HNer from doing useful and valuable things. But they also help ensure that non-power users (who, remember, may anything from doctors to engineers to diplomats to farmers, brilliant experts in their own fields key to society just not in computers) cannot even be social engineered into getting themselves too deep in trouble. And this is obviously, objectively a real problem, and one frankly the tech community brought in part on ourselves with constant "the user is at fault, the user is stupid" stuff for decades. But why SHOULDN'T users just be able to go easily find anything they think looks interesting and give it a whirl, and have a reasonable expectation that it'll meet certain isolation/privacy/payment standards, and if not that it'll get automatically removed and the developer banned? And even for power users, lockdowns can help shift the power balance away from developers and pool user buying power through a point so that devs are forced to obey certain basic standards whether they like it or not. Of course, software lockdowns also destroy valuable innovation, and they create a single point of pressure that is in turn prone to abuse or (likely worse in theory and more prevalent in practice) pressure from even more powerful entities. The likes of China, the EU, or if things go bad enough the US can force censorship onto a vast array of people and devices via iOS in a way that they can't with traditional systems. On the hardware side, lockdowns make repair more difficult/centralized. But they also prevent hardware hacks, and have proven make theft vastly less economic. IMO, I'd like to see a single point, buy-time option to opt for the ability for an owner to load their own root keys for software, hardware, both, or neither. Personally, I'd go for software and not hardware: the devices are very reliable, I'm not a hardware hacker myself and in my own model I'd prefer to run the risk of buying replacement kit rather then even think about hardware subversion. For my parents and grandparents I'd strongly push them to continue with "neither" which should be the default. I'm sure many on HN would like both. Maybe some (particularly in countries where official repairs are much harder) would even prefer to keep the software side of things locked down for malware but as a practical matter allow repairs. But it's intensely frustrating to still see techies who apparently never dealt with family support or Help Desk or whatever in their lives blithely repeat 1990s/early-00s memes about PEBKAC/PICNIC/lusers etc. The BOFH was a ton of fun to read but it's realworld application has limits. I don't feel bad about not being skilled at small engine work, or pharmaceuticals or whatever.
- userbinator 6y agoIndeed, it is always interesting to see these articles that never mention the positive side of these exploits, i.e. enabling freedom. I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise, given the authoritarian nature of the security industry (and most big corporations in general, including Apple.)
- Nextgrid 6y agoIsn't Activation Lock still enforced server-side? During initial setup the iPhone checks in with Apple (presumably providing its serial number, etc) and gets some client certificates back for things like iMessage, push notifications, etc. So even if you circumvent activation lock client-side and get to the phone's home screen, you shouldn't be able to really use it for much (beyond a simple phone and web browser).
- gambiting 6y agoBut this is specifically about the MacBooks, no? Meaning that if you can get the machine to boot it will work as normal, maybe App Store won't work but it shouldn't have much impact on the usability of the machine, right?
- CDSlice 6y agoWell if the activation lock is still enforced server side you also lose iMessages, FaceTime, Continuity between Apple devices like your iPhone, maybe XCode if it checks for activation during install. If you could get the MacBook to boot it would technically be a usable PC, but it would probably lose a bunch of what makes a MacBook special to begin with.
- easton 6y agoYou wouldn't get updates and would have to probably blackhole all of the Apple domains. May be enough to not make it resellable (or at least allow the person who bought it to file something with eBay or whoever to get a refund).
- hungryforcodes 6y agoI had the opposite reaction. I thought -- great! We can return all this hardware that people have irresponsibly abandoned, and bring it back to successful reuse.
- offtop5 6y agoIf you report the phone stolen to your cell phone carrier, they can usually add it to the blacklist.
- gambiting 6y agoWhich doesn't really matter because carriers don't share those blacklists internationally - so stolen devices just end up in another country. Also, I believe this was specifically about MacBooks?
- Mandatum 6y agoThey don't even block them regionally. Across 2 countries I've tested the "shared blacklist" and there's ALWAYS one ISP who doesn't bother implementing the sync. There's also times when accidental IMEI's are added to the list - or duplicate IMEI's are issued for the same device (common with cheap phones), I can't imagine going through the unblocking process internationally.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nottorp 6y agoObligatory xckd: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ Seriously, if you're under the attention of "state actors" you need to worry about this. Otherwise, not so sure.
- threatofrain 6y agoThis impacts anyone who might have their iPhones stolen since ordinary thieves care too.
- nottorp 6y agoActually this is specific to laptops. Also, it's still better than Android phones where last time I checked there was a software based method to unlock. Looks to me like Apple are at least trying.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _qulr 6y agoIt's important to note that the checkra1n team have vehemently criticized this article for inaccuracy. https://twitter.com/axi0mX/status/1313665047768391680 https://twitter.com/axi0mX/status/1313665047768391680 https://twitter.com/su_rickmark/status/1313733383453732864 https://twitter.com/su_rickmark/status/1313733383453732864
- StavrosK 6y agoDoes anyone else see only two replies for the first tweet? It says "THREAD" but then I don't see the thread anywhere. Twitter is terrible.
- _dibly 6y agoNothing very interesting but there's 3 replies I can see, you have to click on the body of the tweet to expand the replies, whereas clicking on the comments button starts your own reply. Yeah, Twitter is terrible.
- 4mnt 6y agoThe thread is in the body of the tweet. Here is the start: https://twitter.com/axi0mX/status/1313620262768635904 https://twitter.com/axi0mX/status/1313620262768635904
- 95014_refugee 6y agoClaiming the T2 runs “SepOS” is a red flag right out of the box.
- swiley 6y agoThis was going to happen, the question was whether or not it would happen while the device was still popular. IMO you're better off just using an encrypted filesystem and typing in a passphrase on boot than dealing with hardware this locked down.
- pram 6y agoThat is exactly how FileVault 2 functions. It also adds defense-in-depth to the T2 hardware encryption.
- danaris 6y agoThe important part about this is that even if 100% true, it's only exploitable with physical access or a compromised USB device of some kind—it's not remotely exploitable. (Exploits also would not last beyond a clean boot.) So while the headline is strictly true based on the contents of the article, I would call it excessively alarmist, at best. This is not something that the average user ever needs to worry about.
- mindfulhack 6y agoThis is infuriating. I spent over $5000 on a 16-inch MBP in only January this year. If I'm a lawyer, CEO, or a human rights journalist (or just anyone) who professionally needs a reasonably secure device as the normal expectation, how can it be reasonable to be required to have your laptop with you at all times in order to maintain its security? Is there precedent in consumer law that if security integrity of hardware is a normal feature of that product category and a computer model is fundamentally unfixable in this aspect, then you have the right to demand a refund or a replacement with a model not containing the same defect? (I know that this depends on your country. My country has strong consumer law.) It's interesting to think about where the line is there. If someone really wants to compromise your device, then they could open it up and plant a bug anyway. But this feels over the line and grounds for being a manufacturer hardware fault, because attacking it would not require to physically modify the device but to merely use the device in the manner that it already came from the manufacturer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago>Is there precedent in consumer law that if basic hardware security is a normal feature of that product category and a computer model has fundamentally unfixable hardware in this aspect, then you have the right to demand a refund or a replacement with a model not containing the same defect? IANAL. You are.
- nottorp 6y agoHmm perhaps you should buy one of the competing cheaper laptops that have no built in encryption then?
- Tsarbomb 6y agoExcept that lots of laptops have hardware based root of trust, encryption, and security management using industry standards. It's apple that does something exotic, breaking industry standards, and then calls what should be standard by some new name for marketing reasons. Same with how lots of people think a "retina" display is some wonderful apple invention and not just a standard samsung panel.
- grishka 6y agoHow many times does this have to happen before everyone realizes that black-box hardware that runs proprietary software that has someone else's public keys hardcoded into it isn't really a "security chip"? T2 chip is user-hostile. Hardcoded, non-overwritable trusted public keys are user-hostile. Simple stuff, really.
- keyme 6y agoAnnoys me to end that people see this as security. The only security this provides is financial security for Apple and whoever pays them for using the DRM on this thing.
- grishka 6y agoYeah. Apple's "security" basically almost always boils down to "please trust us that we implemented this the way we claim we did", with many things trusting Apple servers unconditionally — like iMessage "end-to-end encryption" where an Apple server manages keys. Such end-to-end, much wow. But FileVault was at least reverse engineered enough to prove that it trusts the end user more than Apple.
- pwinnski 6y agoI genuinely don't understand this comment. A hacked T2 is currently less secure than it was a few weeks ago, but I think still more secure than a machine with no T2 at all, no? That is, so far nobody has leveraged this to hack FileVault or SecureEnclave passwords generally, and until then, this is still marginally more secure than no T2 at all. Once the above is no longer true, then a MacBook with T2 will be... exactly as secure as a machine with no T2 at all, right? I guess I'm not seeing how this makes a MacBook less secure than alternatives. What am I missing?
- grishka 6y agoIt is making it less secure because it gives Apple more access to your hardware (I'd call that a backdoor with extra steps) than it does to yourself. Now with this vulnerability, you get to have equal access. But then again, I don't quite understand what problem is T2 solving that isn't solved by simply encrypting the file system with FileVault.
- kristianpaul 6y agoThats why i gpg really important stuff
- lights0123 6y agoIt could still do a firmware-level keylogger, it's the same technique that it would use to bypass FireVault.
- danpalmer 6y agoSo to summarise: - Requires physical device access. - Cannot decrypt FileVault without you entering decryption key post-exploitation. - Cannot access secrets in the Secure Enclave. This isn't great, but it's not really a huge security issue? The main attack vector here is stolen Macs being re-sold as they can be "un-bricked". I know part of the point of the T2 is to make physical access less interesting an attack vector, but it's typically doing so after a machine has been stolen. This makes it more attractive to do without stealing, but that's an attack style that is only really done by state level threats, and one that was still possible anyway, because hardware access is essentially game-over anyway at that point. I feel like this is over-blown? Am I missing something? Is there another attack vector here that's worse for "regular users"?
- totaldude87 6y agoright on Spot, but also brings an ethical question ! lets say you identified an vulnerability or an hack or found something that will nullify a product's security. what would be the first step one should do? 1). send it to apple(or respective company) and if they don't respond after followups, put it on internet 2) put it on internet so it gains popularity and makes the aforesaid companies do something! in some cases like these (those require physical access) this is fine, but what if someone uncovers a potential remote hack for every android or apple phone out there! which option would be ethical?
- pmx 6y agoThe right thing to do is follow Responsible Disclosure https://www.bugcrowd.com/resource/what-is-responsible-disclosure/ https://www.bugcrowd.com/resource/what-is-responsible-disclo...
- userbinator 6y agoI'd say it depends on what that "security" is. If it is remotely exploitable and can harm user freedom, tell the companies quietly. On the other hand, if it can enable user freedom, keep it to yourself and those who you trust to be on your side.
- 6y ago
- keyme 6y agoAnd the real meaning of this for actual people: 1) DRM on these machines is dead (yay). 2) "Anti-theft" features, which are really there just as an excuse to put a dedicated DRM chip into your box, are dead. 3) Physical access to your machine by a sophisticated attacker is game over (unless your data is encrypted and at rest). I hope #3 isn't news to you, despite having an Apple logo on your machine (or Phone).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jiveturkey 6y agoNay! 'tis merely a flesh wound.
- cprecioso 6y agoMedia DRM isn’t dead, as it runs in the Intel IME (DRM is the only part of IME Apple haven’t disabled)
- logicOnly 6y agoIf "security" is just Apple marketing, can we safely say "privacy" is just marketing too? Maybe today things seem fine, but with declining sales, desperate companies are likely to do whatever it takes to make money. Doing something Anti-consumer is not new to Apple's core philosophy.
- mhh__ 6y agoProbably. Apple aren't particularly pro-consumer, so why would they actually care about privacy enough to hurt their bottom line. I'm sure they do care a bit, but it conveniently differentiates them and locks their customers in. Hence, regulation. Lay down the rules, let the free market fight to the bone over who does it best.
- stevehawk 6y agoCareful. All of the Apple employees and fanboys are gonna come for you. Truth need not apply here, friend.
- iamuser7 6y agoThere was prism. Whenever people talk about Apple and privacy I wonder if they just ... forgot? With prism the NSA can reach directly into live servers of American companies and get into the content, not merely metadata of conversations. https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/201...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Dunedan 6y agoPrevious discussion when the vulnerability got published a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24636166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24636166
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago> Good news is that if you are using FileVault2 as disk encryption, they do not have access to your data on disk immediately. They can however inject a keylogger Overall I’m pretty happy hear. A stolen laptop can’t steal my secrets either from the Secure Enclave or disk, and this exploits prevents us from amassing iBricks because the hardware can always be recovered.
- sempron64 6y agoAre equivalent exploits possible on commodity/business PC laptops? i.e. do normal laptops have an always-on SMC these days which could potentially be exploited into a keylogger? This is a terrifying concept.