4 ms·

Only the SEP firmware is encrypted; all the other copro firmwares are plaintext and your can analyze them to your heart's content.

• grishka 5y ago
  A dumb question. What are they trying to achieve by encrypting the SEP firmware? If they want to prevent people modifying it, won't signing it be enough? Otherwise this smells of security through obscurity, which, strictly speaking, isn't really security, and Apple engineers are most likely aware of that.
  • my123 5y ago
    There's also the HDCP and some other DRM keys in there... but then, they encrypt iBoot too. So can't be all of it.
    • grishka 5y ago
      Yeah because clearly DRM has never been broken and none of those keys are known to the public already.
  • monocasa 5y ago
    Security through obscurity can absolutely be an important layer of a defense in depth strategy. It's just useless as the only layer.
  • marcan_42 5y ago
    It's not security through obscurity, it's security plus obscurity. It's a very real fact that if attackers can't find your bugs, they are less likely to exploit them. Apple are well versed in writing secure code, but they slip up sometimes. It seems their calculus at this time is that the time gained by not allowing attackers easy visibility into their code is worth it, in case bugs are found. I don't fully agree with that choice, but I can see why they made it; it is not meaningless.