5 ms·

>Does anyone know if this is still vulnerable to the iCloud Backups problem? The only solution to that right now is for you and your contact to turn on Advanced

by xoa 3y ago

>Does anyone know if this is still vulnerable to the iCloud Backups problem? The only solution to that right now is for you and your contact to turn on Advanced Data Protection. This is such a strange two sentences as a "problem". E2EE security, as it says in the name, is about the protection of dara transmission between two trusted end points. That's it. What the trusted end points themselves choose to do with that data before and after is completely out of scope, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the data transmission aspect. This is true of everything ever. No communication service stops people from backing up with encryption or not, local or remote, or from copy/pasting or for that matter taking photos of the screen ("analog hole"). If you want to "protect" the data from the trusted owners themselves now we're in the realm of DRM. In this case what you wrote is "do non-e2ee remote backups still occur if users do not enable e2ee remote backups or backup locally?" to which the answer is yes. I definitely do blame Apple for not having APIs for backing up to arbitrary network servers when it comes to iDevices, but it's still orthogonal. And remember iMessage is on the Mac as well where people may be backing up anywhere.

AnonC 3y ago
> No communication service stops people from backing up with encryption or not, local or remote, or from copy/pasting or for that matter taking photos of the screen ("analog hole"). At least for the first part on backing up without copy pasting or using the “analog hole”, Signal expressly prohibits and doesn’t allow any kind of backup — encrypted or not — on iOS/iPadOS/macOS.
- zchrykng 3y ago
  This lack of backups makes Signal less appealing to anyone who isn't a security/privacy enthusiast/nut. 99+% of people want their messages to work and not lose them when their phone is broken.
  - codedokode 3y ago
    No I do not agree with you. Majority of people never read their message history, want their messages to self-detruct and don't want to get into a situation like when a new partner reads chat history with all previous partners. Majority of people do not record their conversations and do not need this. And most messaging applications are designed countrary to what people need - they preserve history specially for that curious new partner. Or maybe for a marketing department to analyze user's interests.
    - macintux 3y ago
      I’m very, very skeptical that any of us can accurately assert that a majority of people want this specific behavior from their messaging apps.
    - sib 3y ago
      >> No I do not agree with you. Majority of people never read their message history, want their messages to self-detruct Citation needed.
    - subjectsigma 3y ago
      This has happened to me multiple times: convince non-technical person to download Signal, they delete app or get a new phone, they call me asking why they can’t see all their messages, they are very upset to learn they are all gone. Either I’m extremely unlucky or average users do want this.
- xoa 3y ago
  >Signal expressly prohibits and doesn’t allow any kind of backup — encrypted or not — on iOS/iPadOS/macOS. I do not think you are correct, or perhaps alternatively this is a distinction without meaning. iDevices do indeed lock down against owner control unless the device is jailbroken. But Signal for Mac only requires 10.15 or later. Even if they wanted to, old Intel Macs simply do not offer the hardware guarantees to protect against the owner getting access to their own data if they want to, though even current ones will still let you turn off SIP etc if you wish. I don't even need to look to guarantee that if someone wants access to their own Signal data on the Mac (or Windows, or Linux which can be run with any 64-bit distributions supporting APT), or any of these virtualized (and thus on the BSDs which aren't formally supported [0]), they can get it. And again, this is somewhat a distinction without meaning. Like, how does someone read their messages on Signal for Desktop after setting it up and it's syncing going forward? They login to the system, and there is a saved key and that makes it work. If they then choose to backup said system or VM without encryption now what? I have heard that on iOS Signal has always been somewhat evil in attempting to steal people's data away from them, which is part of the reason I avoided it. But fortunately we don't yet live in a world where the same games can be pulled on regular computers. And hopefully eventually legislation will make it illegal on all computers, including handhelds, too. ---- 0: 64-bit distributions supporting APT
  - AnonC 3y ago
    GP here, with a late reply. Signal allows chats to be backed up and restored on Android. It does not support (and has said it won’t provide the feature) on iOS and related platforms that I mentioned. You can go through Signal’s help pages to confirm this yourself. If you use Signal on an Apple device and that device is either lost or broken, you’ll lose all your Signal messages when you setup a device again. That’s not necessarily the case with Android. Whatever you’ve written isn’t useful in this context.
- super_mario 3y ago
  Signal perhaps does not allow you to export your message history through the front door, however decrypting and exporting your message history is relatively low effort. You messages are stored in encrypted SQLite3 database. The Signal encryption key is in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal/config.json in plain text. If you have SQLCipher (https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher) compiled you can decrypt your Signal database: Navigate to ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal/sql/ and type sqlcipher db.sqlite sqlite> PRAGMA key = "x'<your_key_here>'"; sqlite> .schema and query away. Of course there is a Python package to automate all of this here: https://github.com/carderne/signal-export https://github.com/carderne/signal-export This exports your message history as markdown and HTML files for your convenience and it will do incremental exports as well. For iOS the same holds true, considering iOS has had a jail break most of its existence. So, in retrospect your Signal messages are only as secure as computers of the people you talk to and of course your own device. I would go a step further and assert that there is no such thing as secure communication.
  - AnonC 3y ago
    GP here. Signal allows chats to be backed up on Android. It’s a built in feature.
modeless 3y ago
It's not strange in the slightest. Apple deserves criticism until they fix this. They're going around claiming "end-to-end" and people don't understand that they are constantly handing over people's decrypted messages to law enforcement. It's misleading at best; I call it fraud. It's not as though Apple is merely failing to prevent a third party from breaking their end-to-end encryption here. Apple does it itself! iMessage and iCloud are not separate companies operating independently. The right hand knows what the left is doing! This is not a UX issue or an engineering issue. Apple already built end-to-end encryption for sensitive data types that is still recoverable from backups even if you lose all your devices and forget your iCloud account password. They do it the same way Google does, and they already use it by default for important stuff you don't want to lose like passwords stored in Keychain and health data and a bunch of other stuff too. Literally all they need to do is store the iMessage encryption keys in this system by default. They continuously choose not to, and the reason is reported by Reuters to be a secret compromise agreement with the FBI. https://web.archive.org/web/20200121123026/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://web.archive.org/web/20200121123026/https://www.reute...
- xoa 3y ago
  >It's not strange in the slightest. It very much is strange. >Apple deserves criticism until they fix this. There's nothing to fix, or rather they already "fixed" it by offering an E2EE iCloud backup option to go along with local backups. As I said I think backups should simply be fully under owner control, but as it stands there is absolutely no need to backup without full key control should people wish. And even before that there was no need to use iCloud Backup. I never have. But that has tradeoffs, and it's perfectly reasonable people may choose to make different ones. >They're going around claiming "end-to-end" Correctly. By your twisted definition, there is no such thing as E2EE for any transport in existence because the ends might then do something you don't approve of with the data they own. HTTPS? Not E2EE. SSH? Not E2EE. WireGuard? Not E2EE. Which is completely ludicrous and a total perversion of the specific, important role E2EE plays. >They already built end-to-end encryption for sensitive data types that is still recoverable from backups even if you lose all your devices and forget your iCloud account password No, if you use their full E2EE options, any of them, and you lose all your devices, your password, and recovery key (including any backups you've chosen to make on your own), you are hosed for any of the data that is E2EE protected. Like, by definition? Because otherwise it wouldn't be E2EE! The fallback when ADP is not turned on and someone is using iCloud Backups is that Apple does have the keys, that's the point. There is literally no way around this, it's just definitional. If Apple has, somewhere in the stack, the keys then it can be compelled (or choose) to share them or share access to the data, but they can also help the owner recover if all else is lost. If the owner has exclusive access to all keys then the owner has exclusive responsibility. You can certainly have the opinion that Apple should make that latter the default of only choice. I certainly have the opinion they should offer more choice period. But that's still all orthogonal to the transport mechanism. You can have ultra locked down encrypted devices, and then go to a plain vanilla HTTP website or use telnet for administration and any MITM can see what you're doing. There could be a rootkit on your system that's grabbing everything right out of memory. That doesn't mean random MITMs can see what you're doing either if the transport is E2EE. All of these are important components of the overall security picture, but they're all different ones. >is reported by Reuters to be a secret compromise agreement with the FBI Read your own articles you link. That's a 2020 piece on Apple dropping old plans for owner key control of all private iCloud data. But specifically following the outcry there two years later Apple introduced "advanced data protection" that does precisely what that article is complaining they didn't earlier [0]. It got lots of coverage at the time. They explicitly cover how data is stored afterwards [1]. So people can turn that on. The Reuters piece is obsolete. ---- 0: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-security-with-powerful-new-data-protections/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-s... 1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
This is how Constantinople fell to the Ottomans: they had very high hard to penetrate walls, but forgot to lock one gate. * Replace the walls with highly secure encryption e2e algorithm, and the gate with easily accessible backup, and you'll see why things like this are not out of scope. * - this story is disputed by some historians
callalex 3y ago
Your argument about iMessage on Mac’s holds water, but the iPhone is sold as an appliance and there is no concept of a file system presented to the user. They sell the messaging platform as “encrypted” and the word “encrypted” is plastered all over iCloud marketing and documentation. You really can’t blame the user for assuming the appliance is secure by default. When you first set up an iPhone it just asks you if you want to back up to iCloud. It doesn’t use the word “insecure” nor “unencrypted” anywhere on that screen.
- dwaite 3y ago
  in what way is iCloud backup 'insecure' or 'unencrypted'?
  - callalex 3y ago
    Aha, you are proving my point about how misleading Apple’s communications are about this! By default, iCloud backups are “secured” by a key that Apple stores and controls. This means that both Apple and anyone who can compel or hack Apple can still access your data. Here’s the official documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
diebeforei485 3y ago
The only backup provider allowed is also the communication service provider, which defeats the point of E2EE because the keys are also stores transparently (ie, not even encrypted with the device passcode). That is the problem. Apple's business decision to ban other backup providers like Backblaze etc is making their privacy efforts meaningless. Why is it a problem? Because governments and powerful entities need only contact Apple (the communication provider) to know the contents of the message. And I as a user have no way of knowing if others in the chat have advanced protection enabled, as I am only protected if every participant in the conversation has the correct settings, which are not the default settings. So while this might meet some technical definition of E2EE, it does not meet the common-sense definition of E2EE where the communication provider has zero visibility into content.

by xoa 3y ago

AnonC 3y ago

> No communication service stops people from backing up with encryption or not, local or remote, or from copy/pasting or for that matter taking photos of the screen ("analog hole"). At least for the first part on backing up without copy pasting or using the “analog hole”, Signal expressly prohibits and doesn’t allow any kind of backup — encrypted or not — on iOS/iPadOS/macOS.

zchrykng 3y ago
This lack of backups makes Signal less appealing to anyone who isn't a security/privacy enthusiast/nut. 99+% of people want their messages to work and not lose them when their phone is broken.
- codedokode 3y ago
  No I do not agree with you. Majority of people never read their message history, want their messages to self-detruct and don't want to get into a situation like when a new partner reads chat history with all previous partners. Majority of people do not record their conversations and do not need this. And most messaging applications are designed countrary to what people need - they preserve history specially for that curious new partner. Or maybe for a marketing department to analyze user's interests.
  - macintux 3y ago
    I’m very, very skeptical that any of us can accurately assert that a majority of people want this specific behavior from their messaging apps.
  - sib 3y ago
    >> No I do not agree with you. Majority of people never read their message history, want their messages to self-detruct Citation needed.
  - subjectsigma 3y ago
    This has happened to me multiple times: convince non-technical person to download Signal, they delete app or get a new phone, they call me asking why they can’t see all their messages, they are very upset to learn they are all gone. Either I’m extremely unlucky or average users do want this.
xoa 3y ago
>Signal expressly prohibits and doesn’t allow any kind of backup — encrypted or not — on iOS/iPadOS/macOS. I do not think you are correct, or perhaps alternatively this is a distinction without meaning. iDevices do indeed lock down against owner control unless the device is jailbroken. But Signal for Mac only requires 10.15 or later. Even if they wanted to, old Intel Macs simply do not offer the hardware guarantees to protect against the owner getting access to their own data if they want to, though even current ones will still let you turn off SIP etc if you wish. I don't even need to look to guarantee that if someone wants access to their own Signal data on the Mac (or Windows, or Linux which can be run with any 64-bit distributions supporting APT), or any of these virtualized (and thus on the BSDs which aren't formally supported [0]), they can get it. And again, this is somewhat a distinction without meaning. Like, how does someone read their messages on Signal for Desktop after setting it up and it's syncing going forward? They login to the system, and there is a saved key and that makes it work. If they then choose to backup said system or VM without encryption now what? I have heard that on iOS Signal has always been somewhat evil in attempting to steal people's data away from them, which is part of the reason I avoided it. But fortunately we don't yet live in a world where the same games can be pulled on regular computers. And hopefully eventually legislation will make it illegal on all computers, including handhelds, too. ---- 0: 64-bit distributions supporting APT
- AnonC 3y ago
  GP here, with a late reply. Signal allows chats to be backed up and restored on Android. It does not support (and has said it won’t provide the feature) on iOS and related platforms that I mentioned. You can go through Signal’s help pages to confirm this yourself. If you use Signal on an Apple device and that device is either lost or broken, you’ll lose all your Signal messages when you setup a device again. That’s not necessarily the case with Android. Whatever you’ve written isn’t useful in this context.
super_mario 3y ago
Signal perhaps does not allow you to export your message history through the front door, however decrypting and exporting your message history is relatively low effort. You messages are stored in encrypted SQLite3 database. The Signal encryption key is in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal/config.json in plain text. If you have SQLCipher (https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher) compiled you can decrypt your Signal database: Navigate to ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal/sql/ and type sqlcipher db.sqlite sqlite> PRAGMA key = "x'<your_key_here>'"; sqlite> .schema and query away. Of course there is a Python package to automate all of this here: https://github.com/carderne/signal-export https://github.com/carderne/signal-export This exports your message history as markdown and HTML files for your convenience and it will do incremental exports as well. For iOS the same holds true, considering iOS has had a jail break most of its existence. So, in retrospect your Signal messages are only as secure as computers of the people you talk to and of course your own device. I would go a step further and assert that there is no such thing as secure communication.
- AnonC 3y ago
  GP here. Signal allows chats to be backed up on Android. It’s a built in feature.

modeless 3y ago

It's not strange in the slightest. Apple deserves criticism until they fix this. They're going around claiming "end-to-end" and people don't understand that they are constantly handing over people's decrypted messages to law enforcement. It's misleading at best; I call it fraud. It's not as though Apple is merely failing to prevent a third party from breaking their end-to-end encryption here. Apple does it itself! iMessage and iCloud are not separate companies operating independently. The right hand knows what the left is doing! This is not a UX issue or an engineering issue. Apple already built end-to-end encryption for sensitive data types that is still recoverable from backups even if you lose all your devices and forget your iCloud account password. They do it the same way Google does, and they already use it by default for important stuff you don't want to lose like passwords stored in Keychain and health data and a bunch of other stuff too. Literally all they need to do is store the iMessage encryption keys in this system by default. They continuously choose not to, and the reason is reported by Reuters to be a secret compromise agreement with the FBI. https://web.archive.org/web/20200121123026/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://web.archive.org/web/20200121123026/https://www.reute...

xoa 3y ago
>It's not strange in the slightest. It very much is strange. >Apple deserves criticism until they fix this. There's nothing to fix, or rather they already "fixed" it by offering an E2EE iCloud backup option to go along with local backups. As I said I think backups should simply be fully under owner control, but as it stands there is absolutely no need to backup without full key control should people wish. And even before that there was no need to use iCloud Backup. I never have. But that has tradeoffs, and it's perfectly reasonable people may choose to make different ones. >They're going around claiming "end-to-end" Correctly. By your twisted definition, there is no such thing as E2EE for any transport in existence because the ends might then do something you don't approve of with the data they own. HTTPS? Not E2EE. SSH? Not E2EE. WireGuard? Not E2EE. Which is completely ludicrous and a total perversion of the specific, important role E2EE plays. >They already built end-to-end encryption for sensitive data types that is still recoverable from backups even if you lose all your devices and forget your iCloud account password No, if you use their full E2EE options, any of them, and you lose all your devices, your password, and recovery key (including any backups you've chosen to make on your own), you are hosed for any of the data that is E2EE protected. Like, by definition? Because otherwise it wouldn't be E2EE! The fallback when ADP is not turned on and someone is using iCloud Backups is that Apple does have the keys, that's the point. There is literally no way around this, it's just definitional. If Apple has, somewhere in the stack, the keys then it can be compelled (or choose) to share them or share access to the data, but they can also help the owner recover if all else is lost. If the owner has exclusive access to all keys then the owner has exclusive responsibility. You can certainly have the opinion that Apple should make that latter the default of only choice. I certainly have the opinion they should offer more choice period. But that's still all orthogonal to the transport mechanism. You can have ultra locked down encrypted devices, and then go to a plain vanilla HTTP website or use telnet for administration and any MITM can see what you're doing. There could be a rootkit on your system that's grabbing everything right out of memory. That doesn't mean random MITMs can see what you're doing either if the transport is E2EE. All of these are important components of the overall security picture, but they're all different ones. >is reported by Reuters to be a secret compromise agreement with the FBI Read your own articles you link. That's a 2020 piece on Apple dropping old plans for owner key control of all private iCloud data. But specifically following the outcry there two years later Apple introduced "advanced data protection" that does precisely what that article is complaining they didn't earlier [0]. It got lots of coverage at the time. They explicitly cover how data is stored afterwards [1]. So people can turn that on. The Reuters piece is obsolete. ---- 0: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-security-with-powerful-new-data-protections/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-s... 1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago

This is how Constantinople fell to the Ottomans: they had very high hard to penetrate walls, but forgot to lock one gate. * Replace the walls with highly secure encryption e2e algorithm, and the gate with easily accessible backup, and you'll see why things like this are not out of scope. * - this story is disputed by some historians

callalex 3y ago

Your argument about iMessage on Mac’s holds water, but the iPhone is sold as an appliance and there is no concept of a file system presented to the user. They sell the messaging platform as “encrypted” and the word “encrypted” is plastered all over iCloud marketing and documentation. You really can’t blame the user for assuming the appliance is secure by default. When you first set up an iPhone it just asks you if you want to back up to iCloud. It doesn’t use the word “insecure” nor “unencrypted” anywhere on that screen.

dwaite 3y ago
in what way is iCloud backup 'insecure' or 'unencrypted'?
- callalex 3y ago
  Aha, you are proving my point about how misleading Apple’s communications are about this! By default, iCloud backups are “secured” by a key that Apple stores and controls. This means that both Apple and anyone who can compel or hack Apple can still access your data. Here’s the official documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

diebeforei485 3y ago

The only backup provider allowed is also the communication service provider, which defeats the point of E2EE because the keys are also stores transparently (ie, not even encrypted with the device passcode). That is the problem. Apple's business decision to ban other backup providers like Backblaze etc is making their privacy efforts meaningless. Why is it a problem? Because governments and powerful entities need only contact Apple (the communication provider) to know the contents of the message. And I as a user have no way of knowing if others in the chat have advanced protection enabled, as I am only protected if every participant in the conversation has the correct settings, which are not the default settings. So while this might meet some technical definition of E2EE, it does not meet the common-sense definition of E2EE where the communication provider has zero visibility into content.