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Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (2020)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nomoreplease 5y agoThis really is something Tim needs to address before he again stands on stage and give lip service to Privacy with a capital P. We also need hardball journalists to start asking Tim these tough questions instead of fawning over AirPods And we need employees to start demanding this internally
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- KingOfCoders 5y agoMarketing. Apple does not care about your privacy but your perception. The EFF cares about your privacy.
- consumer451 5y agoIt's not just marketing. As I understand it, purporting to provide a public good can help in antitrust negotiations.
- numpad0 5y agoI think we are all throwing wrong questions at wrong entities. What we should ask is what the hell is going on and what is forcing everyone to implement backdoors in this organized manners.
- int_19h 5y agoYou already know the answers, though. It's either "OMG terrorists!" or "OMG child porn!".
- jiocrag 5y agoChina. Specifically, gradual capitulation to China. "Apple's earnings for Greater China in Q2 2021 were up 87.5% from this time last year, to $17.7 billion. During its latest earnings call, Apple has announced dramatically increased revenues from Greater China for the three months ending March, 2021." China has cracked down hard on domestic Internet companies over the past few weeks (deliberately crushing their tech stock market to rein in these companies and enforce governmental data surveillance/control). They're not going to leave Apple out. Apple literally cannot lose that market. Its market cap would be halved. Saying they're going after child abuse in the US using a new algorithm is the perfect cover for gradual entry into enabling mass surveillance for China. No one can argue with the child abuse use case, but there will be plenty of consternation when this is used to scan for messages critical of Xi and the boys.
- randyrand 5y agoIt’s really sad how right you are. Never admitted it to myself yet.
- yarky 5y agoWhy sad? It seems to me this is the only thing to expect from a for-profit corporation under these circumstances. I don't really see how anybody could expect something different, specially here.
- pjmlp 5y agoThe coffee shop hacker culture belives there is such thing as good and bad companies, hence why Google has been able to fool them with "do no evil" crap.
- yarky 5y agoBelieve != Reality. I still don't see the why though. It seems obvious to me that nothing is to be expected from corporations, other than a hopefully nice product at a reasonable price. Anything other than that sounds like wishful thinking to my ears, but I might be philosophically wrong.
- onethought 5y agoWhat's the backdoor that has been implemented?
- Teever 5y ago> This really is something Tim needs to address before he again stands on stage and give lip service to Privacy with a capital P. Cui bono? Why does Tim Cook need to address this? To benefit Apple shareholders? To assuage the doubts of Apple customers who bought the false claims that Apple has made regarding their respect for users privacy? Truth be told I don't think that Tim Cook as CEO of one of the richest and most powerful organizations in history needs to do anything because Apple has their customers by the balls. What are the few Apple users who even care about this issue going to do? Switch to Microsoft? Linux? Hah! Face it, Apple users have made their bed and now they have to lie in it. People have been warning them for years about the Faustian bargain that they were making and how it was corrosive to society to entrench an entity like Apple and now here we are.
- zepto 5y ago> false claims that Apple has made regarding their respect for users privacy What false claim have they made?
- Teever 5y agoEvery claim that Apple makes about respecting user privacy is false because Apple does not allow users the means to independently verify the claims made by Apple regarding security. Additionally Apple does not allow users the means t control the hardware that they purchase by for instance, installing whatever software that they want on their devices.
- busymom0 5y ago> And we need employees to start demanding this internally If anything, this is the only thing which can actually get Apple to reverse their moves. Similar to what happened to Google.
- brandon272 5y agoAs I've mentioned in another thread, Apple has been marketing itself so strongly as the leader in privacy that it now speaks about how it now treats privacy as a "fundamental human right". Their executives started using this phrasing when discussing privacy. It is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary commitment and action. To me, at least, that means privacy without compromise - and for everyone. ("Fundamental human rights" apply to all of us, right?) Privacy with a bunch of disclaimers attached to it indicating all of the conditions under which your privacy will be abridged is not privacy. And it's certainly not the behaviour of a company that treats privacy as a "fundamental human right". Apple needs to get a grip when it comes to dealing with and living up to this self-stated core value. I think that given the waves created by this CSAM on-device hash checking announcement and the questions many have about how to square this with their privacy talk, Apple's executives should say something and they should be unequivocal in what they say.
- charbonneau 5y agoApple is doing the right thing. About 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys experience child sexual abuse in the US at some point in childhood (underreported) [1]. What's more important? Your right to "privacy" (which you can still invoke by simply not using iCloud) or their right to a normal life? And yes, their CSAM detection has lots of false-positives, but it will evolve. It will be doubleplusgood. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fastfact.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fast...
- Dah00n 5y ago>What's more important? Your right to "privacy" (which you can still invoke by simply not using iCloud) or their right to a normal life? My right to privacy of course because the other option is a strawman. What you are doing is the typical slippery slope of selling out something for everyone because of a small minority of criminals. "Should criminal Mr. X be allowed to do Bad-Thing-At-Level-10 to Small-Amount or should we do Bad-Thing-At-Level-1 to Everyone?" None of these are correct. Both are or should be illegal. Did you look into this? Because those who know how this system work says that not only will Apple's system not work it is also clearly illegal: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-One-Bad-Apple.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On... This is getting rolled out in the US, with one of (if not the) biggest populations of innocent people being put in prison in the western world. Where mass-surveillance is, well, massive. If this hasn't specifically been made to be abused as a backdoor it will quickly any way.
- charbonneau 5y ago25% of all girls (officially). That's not a small minority of criminals, that's a national tragedy. Americans must use every legal and constitutional tool in their arsenal to fight abuse and protect their children. The numbers make clear that the old rules no longer work. And it's "clearly illegal" because of... what? Because his (unnamed) attorney claims it's a felony? What if a different attorney claims it's perfectly legal? It's just a CSAM detector for content you upload to iCloud. We're willing to shut down schools and shops to save lives but if there's a theoretical .000001% chance that some rando might look at my beach photos, it's suddenly mass-surveillance backdoor China stuff? Come on. We live in a society.
- rasz 5y agoWhy? They keep claiming being earth loving green hippies while mandating shredding of perfectly repairable/reusable products. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBqSOA9wRPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBqSOA9wRPk Doesnt seem to bother too many of their clients.
- scopio918 5y agoNot sure, what's the point of sharing a two years old news.
- rovr138 5y agoFrom Guidelines, > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity Because someone found it interesting and curious with the state of things.
- scopio918 5y agofair enough
- userbinator 5y agoTake this in context of the recent news about CSAM scanning.
- selsta 5y agoDon't use the cloud if you care about privacy, or encrypt the data yourself before uploading. Has always been the case.
- new299 5y agoThe point is that offline content detection on data that will be uploaded to iCloud feels like a prelude to offline detection of all content on your device. In fact, given that Apple do not E2E encrypt backups and already implement CSAM functionality by scanning data in iCloud [1] it's not clear what the purpose of the new PSI/CSAM system is. Which leads many to speculate that it's only purpose is as a prelude to scanning all offline content. [1] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-icloud-photos-for-child-abuse-images/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-...
- zionic 5y agoThat’s not enough, Apple is “open” to adding these APIs to 3rd party apps as of today’s news. It was never going to stop at iCloud uploads.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoI fully agree but Apple is pushing iCloud hard. Hell it's seemless ecosystem is their main selling point.
- shapefrog 5y agoThe ad on tv is pushing adult diapers hard - does that mean you have to buy them and wear them?
- new299 5y agoSome have speculated that with the introduction of the PSI/CSAM system Apple will enable E2EE backups. Given the lack of an explicit statement on Apple's part and their history regarding E2EE backups (this article, and other statements). It seems really unlikely to me that Apple will enable E2EE backups. Under E2EE, assuming the device key is randomly generated, if you have one device (as many users do) and you lose that device you would lose all your data. The alternative is the key is derived from your iCloud password, in which case, if you forget your password, you lose all your data. Right now, you can browse your photos online. There's been no statement that this is going away. Implementing this functionality with E2EE backups seem highly problematic. These are huge changes to iCloud functionality that Apple would surely announce... There are many open questions. And given that there’s no clear statement from Apple, I’m inclined to believe that they retain the ability to decrypt all data.
- modeless 5y agoThere is a third option, which is to use secure elements in the datacenter to encrypt the device key with the user's screen lock code. The secure element prevents brute force attacks even with a low entropy passcode. The user can restore their backups on a fresh device only knowing their screen lock code, but backups remain end-to-end encrypted. Google has done this for Android backups. Apple has actually done it too, but only for Keychain passwords and a couple of other things. So Apple actually already has an implementation of the right solution and intentionally prevents you from using it to secure your backups, reportedly because they failed to stand up to the FBI. Which is strange given their public stance in the San Bernardino case.
- new299 5y agoThis still seems like it would require a significant change in functionality, which they would likely announce. I.e. lose your lock code, lose all your data. Also, are you going to enter your lock code online to browse photos in a browser? What about syncing between devices? In the absence of an explicit announcement regarding these changes in functionality it seems unlikely to me.
- g42gregory 5y agoI was patiently waiting for the M1 16in MacBook Pro to come out. After reading all these revelations, I am now considering not buying the new MacBook Pro and instead, just stick with Linux.
- busymom0 5y agoI am an app developer who was thinking of upgrading to the next M1 Mac mini coming out later this year. For my work, I pretty much need an Apple hardware. However after this whole privacy debacle, I have started looking into Hackintosh and whether I can build one to for building my apps. If anyone has experience with developing for iOS/MacOS on hackintosh, please let me know your experience.
- gogopuppygogo 5y agoYou can build one. Lots of guides out there and compatibility lists for components. It’s going to be a science project though with only community support for an adversarial operating system. If you plan to use it for work then buy a Mac. It’s a tool for a job.
- beepboop43 5y agorunning it virtually is also an option. I run macos in virtualbox for the times I need it (for me that's not daily) and have no issues with it
- hnskrall 5y agoWhat to make of this whole thing? Hard to say. But here’s an amusing thought. Before I start: I’ll invoke dang’s rage for a moment and say this is yet another burner account due to my previous ones being flagged/banned - not for anything actually illegal or low brow or whatever, but for going against the orthodoxy. Trite and cliche statement, yes. This whole thing is yet another nail in the coffin. Maybe Apple will back out, maybe not, but really it doesn’t matter. Could be any other company, I don’t particularly care. What does matter is how HN treats its members and how moderator(s) handle things when we bring these possibilities up. This is where I think the ball has been dropped. You can also substitute HN for other technophile forums, again, doesn’t matter. You need to learn that shunning us when we are telling you what’s going to happen isn’t the way to go about this. You deplatform us on these topics because you think you know better and we are the trolls and conspiracy theorists with our unsubstantiated claims, lack of evidence, data, and so on. To us, you can’t see the forest for the trees nor the train wreck approaching. I think most of us just stopped caring. You can say every so often that a broken clock is right twice a day. But I am pretty sure both Assange and Snowden shake their heads at such a statement here and wonder if it’s true naïveté or if you’re trying to guile others. But, for the time being you can believe what the news and Snopes say and continue to shitpost HN. Eventually it’ll be you on the chopping block.
- Valkhyr 5y agoCourage.
- robertwt7 5y agoI'm actually curious, are they allowed to encrypt backups if FBI requested them not to? I thought as American company you have to comply with the law as well. Not sure though Edit: damn downvotes, is this reddit? I'm literally asking because I don't know. nothing is controversial here
- barsonme 5y agoThe FBI can request until they’re blue in the face. They don’t make laws. And so far, there aren’t any laws preventing Apple from encrypting backups.
- robertwt7 5y agoRight.. yeah because some laws like anti terrorism or money laundering etc stated that tech companies has to save the data and share with the gov if the gov requested. Source: I work in fintech
- Hamuko 5y agoDo these laws specify that you're not allowed to make features that encrypt data?
- robertwt7 5y agoNo not that, what I meant was that you have to be able to provide when requested. Meaning that you have to be able to decrypt it if requested. Not just 1 way encryption
- Hamuko 5y agoSo is Amazon breaking the law if I upload GPG-encrypted files to S3?
- rswail 5y agoNo, because AWS is not providing financial services. If you are and you upload encrypted data to S3, then you'd better have the ability to decrypt it if required by the financial regulators, otherwise you are breaking the law.
- dragonelite 5y agoThat is why apple could take such a strong stand point when the FBI asked to crack the device itself some years ago. Your device has become nothing more then a portal into their cloud and ecosystem. Where the fbi pretty much has free reign.
- rubatuga 5y agoThere's a way to make fully encrypted backups of your iPhone locally, check out my blog post from my self-hosting series: https://www.naut.ca/blog/2020/03/20/self-hosting-series-part-4-backup/ https://www.naut.ca/blog/2020/03/20/self-hosting-series-part... This works well on Linux, and iOS 14. You can skip to the section `Compiling idevicebackup2`.
- WatchDog 5y agoIs there any icloud alternative backup, that doesn't involve connecting to a computer? It seems that it's possible for third party apps to backup certain data, like photos and contacts, but to do a full device backup you either need to use icloud, or connect via USB to a computer.
- rubatuga 5y agoyes, you can use usbmuxd with macOS, but it means you have to purchase a Mac, and who wants to run macOS as a server OS.
- WatchDog 5y agoI'm confused, twofold, first of all being that usbmuxd means you need to connect to a computer, second of all being that it seems usbmuxd works on various platforms, not just macOS?
- rubatuga 5y agohttps://github.com/libimobiledevice/libimobiledevice/issues/919 https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libimobiledevice/issues/... usbmuxd is responsible for wifi sync. However, it appears there is usbmuxd2 which is compatible with Linux and support wifi sync. I think you may be in luck! If you figure it out, please let me know.
- teitoklien 5y agoThanks for this !
- heavyset_go 5y agoIn the first half of 2020, Apple gave data on over 31,000 users/accounts based on FISA requests National Security Letter requests[1]. Apple provided data to the government's requests roughly 9,000 times. About 85% - 92% of the time, according to Apple, they responded to data requests from the government with the data that was requested. I don't see why Apple would turn about face and make it impossible to respond to the requests that they choose to respond with data about 85% of the time. [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
- Thorrez 5y agoWhat data are they responding with? Account name and creation date? IP addresses used to log in to the account? iCloud backups?
- shapefrog 5y agoI love how outraged people get when a company responds to a court order like in the fantasy world they live in Apples lawyers are running into court, screaming 'Objection Your Honor' while Tim Cook is furioulsy shredding your papers for you. Court orders are part of basic auditing of a service. Seeing what they have to hand over on request (they will hand over everything) tells you exactly what information they have.
- the8472 5y agoNSLs aren't court orders and the FISC is not exactly the pinnacle of due process.
- heavyset_go 5y agoApple specifically says that it gives customer information and customer data when responding to data requests. Given that delineation, I'll trust Apple when they say they gave customer data away instead of just information like account name or creation date.
- 5y ago
- dukeofdoom 5y agoThese people really hate you and think low enough of you that they feel they have a right to rummage through your personal belongings anytime they wish. America feels like its over. The dream is dead. The supreme court full of weak people that will rubber stamp the rot. People feared AI, and they got laughed at. But its literally AI bots manufacturing consent on twitter and social media to this authoritarian slide.
- 8eye 5y agoapple is burning to ashes over this
- valparaiso 5y agoNo one cares except some dumb vocal minorities who can’t read the Apple papers.
- bengale 5y agoWould be good if it was having any noticeable impact at all. I was hoping to get a nice discount on the stock.
- jopsen 5y ago> However, a former Apple employee said it was possible the encryption project was dropped for other reasons, such as concern that more customers would find themselves locked out of their data more often. Sounds more plausible to me. Most of Apples customers are normal end-users, I can see how loosing access is worse for them as compared to data being available for a search warrant. I suspect "risk of loosing the key" vs "risk hackers get access to the backup" is really what you want to weight here.
- ianhawes 5y agoAlmost all of the “iCloud Leaks” aka “The Fappening” occurred because hackers could infiltrate an iCloud account, then use software to exfiltrate the contents of backed up iPhones/iPads, in addition to the user’s photo streams. The backups often contained unsync’d photos, some that were even deleted. This was a massive PR hit for Apple that continues to this day. My guess is that they saw encrypted backups as a solution to the leak problem, but the FBI has long used iOS backups as a back door into increasingly difficult and expensive to crack iPhones. Phone analysis is the #1 most common investigative tool for federal (and now, all) law enforcement, so turning off a major tool likely required intervention at the highest levels of government. Big brother does not like losing their spying abilities.
- liberty-bzmh 5y agoそれはまったく驚くべきことではありません。
- sandstrom 5y agoIf anyone is curious of what data Apple have on you, you can request it via their website. https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/17/request-your-personal-data-from-apple/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/17/request-your-personal-data-fr... Note that this won't include certain categories that are stored unencrypted on Apple servers, for example iCloud backups and other data in iCloud (files, photos, calendars, contacts, etc). I was quite surprised to see that even excluding all the data they (often) have from peoples iCloud accounts, there is still a bunch of stuff they collect. Aside: I really wish Apple would spend more time on end-to-end encryption, for example of iCloud calendar and contact data as well as (obviously) the backups. They should also have developer guides for app developers, on how to build it into apps: common patterns (group E2E patterns, multi-device E2E, open-source data sync servers that apps could use to arbitrarily synchronize E2E encrypted data between devices, etc).
- birdyrooster 5y agoThe answer is simple. Disable iCloud/iMessage, backup/restore your files the old fashioned way, and use Telegram or something for messaging. Don’t even opt into any of the ways they can spy on you. iCloud and iMessage suck anyways, you aren’t really losing anything of value
- Maxburn 5y agoApple can reach in and turn those on and trigger a backup whenever they want. I'm actually curious how telegram and signal deal with this, I haven't researched that yet. End to end doesn't work if the endpoint is compromised, and apple has that baked in as a "feature".
- Maxburn 5y agoAnswering myself; https://medium.com/@elcomsoft/forensic-guide-to-imessage-whatsapp-telegram-signal-and-skype-data-acquisition-e7a24e339e50 https://medium.com/@elcomsoft/forensic-guide-to-imessage-wha... Signal; -Legal requests: Signal does not keep communication histories its servers. Since there is nothing to request, Signal conversations cannot be obtained with legal requests. -Vendor cloud: Signal does not keep conversations on its servers. Cloud acquisition is not possible. -Local backups: Signal does not store conversations in local (iTunes) backups. -iCloud backups: Same as above. Signal does not store conversation histories in iCloud backups. -iCloud Drive: No stand-alone backups in iCloud Drive. -File system: Signal database is encrypted. The encryption key is stored in the keychain with the highest protection class. Extracting and decrypting the keychain (e.g. with Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit) is required in order to decrypt the Signal database. Telegram; -Legal requests: Telegram keeps a comprehensive history of the user’s regular (non-secret) chats on its servers. Regular and group chats can be obtained with a legal request depending on jurisdiction. Secret chats are never stored and cannot be obtained with a legal request. Telegram is notable for ignoring legal requests in some jurisdictions, which had led the service banned in several countries. -Vendor cloud: As mentioned above, Telegram keeps the history on its own servers. By authenticating as a user, one can retrieve those communications (except secret chats) from Telegram servers. -Local backups: Telegram does not store conversations in local backups. Instead, conversation histories are synchronized using Telegram’s own cloud service. -iCloud backups: Same as above. Telegram does not store conversation histories in iCloud backups. -iCloud Drive: There are no stand-alone backups in iCloud Drive. -File system: Telegram does not feature any additional protection to the working database. Once a file system image is captured from the iPhone, extracting and analyzing Telegram conversations including secret chats and attachments is trivial.
- mrkramer 5y ago"Privacy is a fundamental human right. At Apple, it’s also one of our core values. Your devices are important to so many parts of your life. What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you. We design Apple products to protect your privacy and give you control over your information. It’s not always easy. But that’s the kind of innovation we believe in." [0] So hypocritical. [0] https://www.apple.com/privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/
- api 5y agoLocal encryption of backups is very easy. I could code a basic implementation in an afternoon that would lack sophisticated security features but would be "correct" and far better than nothing. There's software out there to do it, but it tends to be geeks-only FOSS tools or obscure "advanced" settings in backup engines on things like NAS devices. None of those things are mainstream. The fact that a feature like this doesn't come built into things like Dropbox is puzzling until you consider that large companies have probably been heavily pressured against mainstreaming this kind of encryption. The absence of encryption as a standard option (even if not the default) in things like remote storage, cloud file sharing, and e-mail tools can really only be explained this way since I know for a fact that some percentage of business users would love it.
- LanceH 5y agoEvery time I see one of these stories I wonder why the government has a seat at the table to decrease our rights. We currently have the right to encrypt backups. Why is the government lobbying to take that away from us? This is a right the government should be protecting for us, instead of stripping away. An enforcement agency should never be advocating against the rights of the people.
- sneak 5y agoThe people in society who appoint themselves as police also appoint themselves someone who is allowed superiority over those who do not. They expect to have rights that you don't have. They expect to violate your rights in ways the inverse would be a crime. There are always those who feel themselves above the common person, and appoint themselves decisionmaker unilaterally. This eventually happens in every country. There have been attempts to limit the scope and scale of spying, but so far nobody has ever been able to contain it. The US intelligence agencies now have utter control over the legislature and judiciary thanks to mass surveillance. There is no way to roll it back now. It's even illegal to talk about it in public, as Wyden and Snowden (and Clapper) have so fully illustrated.
- Threeve303 5y agoThe federal government should quit using private companies to get around the limitations placed on it by the powers enumerated in the constitution.