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No amount of remote attestation and "transparency logs" and other bombastic statements like this would make up for the fact that they are fully in control of th

No amount of remote attestation and "transparency logs" and other bombastic statements like this would make up for the fact that they are fully in control of the servers and the software. There is absolutely no way for a customer to verify their claims that the data is not saved or transferred elsewhere. So unless they offer a way for us to run the "cloud services" on our own hardware where we can strictly monitor and firewall all network activity, they are almost guaranteed to be misusing that data, especially given Apple's proven track record of giving in to government's demands for data access (see China).

kfreds 2y ago
> No amount of remote attestation and "transparency logs" and other bombastic statements like this would make up for the fact that they are fully in control of the servers and the software. There is absolutely no way for a customer to verify their claims that the data is not saved or transferred elsewhere. You are right. Apple is fully in control of the servers and the software, and there is no way for a customer to verify Apple's claims. Nevertheless system transparency is a useful concept. It can effectively reduce the number of things you have to blindly trust to a short and explicit list. Conversely it forces the operator, in this case Apple, to explicitly lie. As others have pointed out, that is quite a business risk. As for transparency logs, it is an amazing technology which I can highly recommend you take a look at in case you don't know what it is or how it works. Check out transparency.dev or the project I'm involved in, sigsum.org. > they are almost guaranteed to be misusing that data That is very unlikely because of the liability, as others have pointed out. They are making claims which the Apple PCC architecture helps make falsifiable.
astrange 2y ago
> There is absolutely no way for a customer to verify their claims that the data is not saved or transferred elsewhere. Transparency logs are capable of verifying that, it's more or less the whole point of them. (Strictly speaking, you can make it arbitrarily expensive to fake it.) Also, if they were "transferring your data elsewhere" it would be a GDPR violation. Ironically wrt your China claim, it would also be illegal in China, which does in fact have privacy laws.
- ls612 2y ago
  Are transparency logs akin to Certificate Transparency but for signed code? I’ve read through the section a couple times and still don’t fully understand it.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Yeah, it's a log of all the software that runs on the server. If you trust the secure boot process then you trust the log describes its contents. If you don't trust the boot process/code signing system then you'd want to do something else, like ask the server to show you parts of its memory on demand in case you catch it lying to you. (Not sure if that's doable here because the server has other people's data on it, which is the whole point.)
    - kfreds 2y ago
      One approach would be a chip design where a remote attestation request issues a hardware interrupt, and then the hardware hashes the contents of memory, more specifically the memory containing the code.
      - astrange 2y ago
        That's not quite enough but yes. (You need to prove that the system is showing you the server your data is present on, and not just showing you an innocuous one and actually processing your data on a different evil one.)
- gigel82 2y ago
  That makes no sense at all. They control the servers and services entirely; they can choose to emit whatever logs they want into the "transparent logs" and then emit whatever else they don't want into non-transparent logs. Even if they were running open source software with cryptographically verified / reproducible builds, it's still running on their hardware (any component or the OS / kernel or even hardware can be hooked into to exfiltrate unencrypted data). Companies like Apple don't give a crap about GDPR violations (you can look at their "DMA compliance" BS games to see to what extent they're willing to go to skirt regulations in the name of profit).

kfreds 2y ago

> No amount of remote attestation and "transparency logs" and other bombastic statements like this would make up for the fact that they are fully in control of the servers and the software. There is absolutely no way for a customer to verify their claims that the data is not saved or transferred elsewhere. You are right. Apple is fully in control of the servers and the software, and there is no way for a customer to verify Apple's claims. Nevertheless system transparency is a useful concept. It can effectively reduce the number of things you have to blindly trust to a short and explicit list. Conversely it forces the operator, in this case Apple, to explicitly lie. As others have pointed out, that is quite a business risk. As for transparency logs, it is an amazing technology which I can highly recommend you take a look at in case you don't know what it is or how it works. Check out transparency.dev or the project I'm involved in, sigsum.org. > they are almost guaranteed to be misusing that data That is very unlikely because of the liability, as others have pointed out. They are making claims which the Apple PCC architecture helps make falsifiable.

astrange 2y ago

> There is absolutely no way for a customer to verify their claims that the data is not saved or transferred elsewhere. Transparency logs are capable of verifying that, it's more or less the whole point of them. (Strictly speaking, you can make it arbitrarily expensive to fake it.) Also, if they were "transferring your data elsewhere" it would be a GDPR violation. Ironically wrt your China claim, it would also be illegal in China, which does in fact have privacy laws.

ls612 2y ago
Are transparency logs akin to Certificate Transparency but for signed code? I’ve read through the section a couple times and still don’t fully understand it.
- astrange 2y ago
  Yeah, it's a log of all the software that runs on the server. If you trust the secure boot process then you trust the log describes its contents. If you don't trust the boot process/code signing system then you'd want to do something else, like ask the server to show you parts of its memory on demand in case you catch it lying to you. (Not sure if that's doable here because the server has other people's data on it, which is the whole point.)
  - kfreds 2y ago
    One approach would be a chip design where a remote attestation request issues a hardware interrupt, and then the hardware hashes the contents of memory, more specifically the memory containing the code.
    - astrange 2y ago
      That's not quite enough but yes. (You need to prove that the system is showing you the server your data is present on, and not just showing you an innocuous one and actually processing your data on a different evil one.)
gigel82 2y ago
That makes no sense at all. They control the servers and services entirely; they can choose to emit whatever logs they want into the "transparent logs" and then emit whatever else they don't want into non-transparent logs. Even if they were running open source software with cryptographically verified / reproducible builds, it's still running on their hardware (any component or the OS / kernel or even hardware can be hooked into to exfiltrate unencrypted data). Companies like Apple don't give a crap about GDPR violations (you can look at their "DMA compliance" BS games to see to what extent they're willing to go to skirt regulations in the name of profit).