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Let me know when everything on iCloud is fully end-to-end encrypted. Until then, Apple are still knowingly compromising security in the interests of other prior

Let me know when everything on iCloud is fully end-to-end encrypted. Until then, Apple are still knowingly compromising security in the interests of other priorities. Maybe those priorities are well-intentioned, helping to make sure their customers don't lose access to precious photos because they lost some important key. Maybe they are driven by more nefarious motives, such as the endless rumours of government interventions. It doesn't really matter, because the gaping security vulnerability is there all the same, and much of what Apple does actively pushes users into it, and at the same time Apple makes a big deal about the security and privacy of its devices. At least if you are technically inclined you can read their more technical documentation to understand what is really happening, which is to their credit. But it seems likely that most people potentially affected by that vulnerability won't have done so.

shadowgovt 6y ago
Full end-to-end encryption bumps up against Apple's second goal of user friendliness. If the data they store is encrypted with a key that you and only you own, and you lose that key, they can't help you as a user. This may be surprising, but a lot of users don't accept that as an answer and find this to be a less valuable business model than one where the trusted vendor has skeleton keys.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Sure, and maybe that's a reasonable position to take commercially, though I note that Apple does use end-to-end encryption for various specific categories of data on iCloud so the argument about being user-friendly with recovery options is not without its weaknesses. In any case, iCloud still isn't fully secure, and Apple isn't very honest about that in its marketing. It also doesn't give those users who do value security and privacy more highly the opportunity to use iCloud with real security, while simultaneously making it unnecessarily difficult to transfer data using other, more secure methods. As one potential alternative for discussion, you could instead construct a system where users had the option of keeping keys entirely under their control, with suitable backup options, or of creating an online emergency recovery system where partial key data was given to Y trusted friends and recovering that data from any X out of those Y would be sufficient to reconstruct the key. Each friend need only know that they are agreeing to be an emergency keyholder for someone, and no-one else other than the original user and the keyholder need know that the relationship even exists. The UI for a system like that could be extremely simple. Turn on the emergency recovery system. Identify a list of friends you want to trust. They each get asked if they're willing to help, and you either get a list of people who all said yes or prompted to choose more people if anyone declined or couldn't be reached. Once you've got enough, everyone who is a trustee carries around a suitable fragment of the other keys on their own secure device(s) in exactly the same way that their own key is held.

shadowgovt 6y ago

Full end-to-end encryption bumps up against Apple's second goal of user friendliness. If the data they store is encrypted with a key that you and only you own, and you lose that key, they can't help you as a user. This may be surprising, but a lot of users don't accept that as an answer and find this to be a less valuable business model than one where the trusted vendor has skeleton keys.

Silhouette 6y ago
Sure, and maybe that's a reasonable position to take commercially, though I note that Apple does use end-to-end encryption for various specific categories of data on iCloud so the argument about being user-friendly with recovery options is not without its weaknesses. In any case, iCloud still isn't fully secure, and Apple isn't very honest about that in its marketing. It also doesn't give those users who do value security and privacy more highly the opportunity to use iCloud with real security, while simultaneously making it unnecessarily difficult to transfer data using other, more secure methods. As one potential alternative for discussion, you could instead construct a system where users had the option of keeping keys entirely under their control, with suitable backup options, or of creating an online emergency recovery system where partial key data was given to Y trusted friends and recovering that data from any X out of those Y would be sufficient to reconstruct the key. Each friend need only know that they are agreeing to be an emergency keyholder for someone, and no-one else other than the original user and the keyholder need know that the relationship even exists. The UI for a system like that could be extremely simple. Turn on the emergency recovery system. Identify a list of friends you want to trust. They each get asked if they're willing to help, and you either get a list of people who all said yes or prompted to choose more people if anyone declined or couldn't be reached. Once you've got enough, everyone who is a trustee carries around a suitable fragment of the other keys on their own secure device(s) in exactly the same way that their own key is held.