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I'm disappointed that they make the fundamental claim that their cloud service is private with respect to user inputs passed through it and don't even a little
by advael 2y ago
I'm disappointed that they make the fundamental claim that their cloud service is private with respect to user inputs passed through it and don't even a little bit talk about how that's accomplished. Even just an explanation of what guarantees they make and how would be much more interesting than explanations of their flavor of RLHF or whatever nonsense. I read the GAZELLE* paper when it came out and wondered what it would look like if a large-scale organization tried to deploy something like it.
Of course, Apple will never give adequate details about security mechanisms or privacy guarantees. They are in the business of selling you security as something that must be handled by them and them alone, and that knowing how they do it would somehow be less secure (This is the opposite of how it actually works, but also Apple loves doublespeak, and 1984 allusions have been their brand since at least 1984). I view that, like any claim by a tech company that they are keeping your data secure in any context, as security theater. Vague promises are no promises at all. Put up or shut up.
* https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05507 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05507
- killingtime74 2y agoDon't they do it in this linked article? https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/ https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
- advael 2y agoWoa, good catch! Maybe they're doing better about at least being concrete about it, though I still have to side-eye "Users control their devices" (Even with root on macbooks I don't have access to everything running on it). However, the section that promises to open-source the cloud software are impressive and if true gives them more credibility than I assumed. I would still look out for places where devices they do control could pass them keys in still-proprietary parts of the stack they're operating, as even if we can verify the cloud container OS in its entirety if there's a backchannel for keys that a hypervisor could use then that's still a backdoor, but they are at least seemingly making a real effort here
- threeseed 2y ago> Even with root on macbooks I don't have access to everything running on it Just disable System Integrity Protection and then you do.
- advael 2y agoAh, word. Probably not applicable to my use case (It's a laptop that's remotely administrated for a job, and I avoid proprietary stuff for my personal devices where possible) but it's good to know it exists
- solarkraft 2y agoThat has a few drawbacks, for instance you won't be able to run iOS apps anymore.
- advael 2y agoYea, nice as it is to hear that they're nice to their dev marketshare, there's probably never going to be a sanctioned iphone the end user actually gets to control. Bread and butter and such
- senderista 2y agoThis approach is definitely not "secure by construction" like FHE, it's just defense-in-depth with a whole lot of impressive-sounding layers. But I don't see how this has anything to do with provable security (not that TFA claims it does).
- KoolKat23 2y agoThe only two questions I would have would be, how often are they "periodically rebooted" and what are the predefined metrics logged/reported. We may have some insight into the second point when the code is published.