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There's something missing from this discussion. What really matters isn't how secure this is on an absolute scale, or how much one can trust Apple. Rather, we

by lukev 2y ago

There's something missing from this discussion. What really matters isn't how secure this is on an absolute scale, or how much one can trust Apple. Rather, we should weigh this against what other cloud providers offer. The status quo for every other provider is: "this data is just lying around on our servers. The only thing preventing a employee from accessing it is that it would be a violation of policy (and might be caught in an internal audit.)" Most providers also carve out several cases where they can look at your data, for support, debugging, or analytics purposes. So even though the punchline of "you still need to trust Apple" is technically true, this is qualitatively different because what would need to occur for Apple to break their promises here is so much more drastic. For other services to leak their data, all it takes is for one employee to do something they shouldn't. For Apple, it would require a deliberate compromise of the entire stack at the hardware level. This is very much harder to pull off, and more difficult to hide, and therefore Apple's security posture is qualitatively better than Google, Meta or Microsoft. If you want to keep your data local and trust no-one, sure, fine, then you don't need to trust anyone else at all. But presuming you (a) are going to use cloud services and (b) you care about privacy, Apple has a compelling value proposition.

harry8 2y ago
> Apple has a compelling value proposition. No. Apple has a proposition that /may/ be better than the current alternatives?
- lukev 2y ago
  If Apple is doing what they say they are, it is in fact better. No maybe about it. If they’re not, that means they are acting and intentionally deceiving the public security community which they are inviting to audit it. Is that something you actually think is happening? I think we need to be clear here. Your threat model may or may not be covered by the guarantees they are able to document, but just saying “well maybe they’re still doing some unspecified nefarious thing” is not contributing to the discussion. Especially when none of the alternatives are even trying.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Honestly I think this is a disingenuous defense. It's not insane to look at a closed-source project that is being partially-audited by cherrypicked organizations and say "that's not a very secure or trustworthy process". There is no reasonable accountability being offered to the community. It's like Ford selecting private safety inspectors to tell customers how great their safety is while conveniently leaving out any of the results from their federally-mandated crash tests. Is this really helping customers, or is it just blatant and masturbatory marketing? Apple has worked to deceive the public before, in both small and large ways. They lied about backdooring notifications for the US government when they were asked to[0], so it's not too hard to imagine it happening anywhere else in their systems. They're not taking a traditional approach to software transparency which is suspicious, and their "threat model" has professedly not protected against motivated requests for identifying information[1]. When the Mechanical Turk attempted to fool commoners watching it work, it was imperative to hide every trace of the human inside. The candle used to see inside the machine was masked by smoke from candles placed around the room, the cabinet was locked to avoid accidental opening, and people were told not to touch it because it was apparently 'expensive and fragile'. Looks like Apple is the ringleader this time around. > but just saying “well maybe they’re still doing some unspecified nefarious thing” is not contributing to the discussion. But Apple is saying the opposite, "well, maybe we're doing the detailed secure thing, ask these people we hired", and you're praising them for it. If calling out objective and obvious logical fallacies isn't contribution, then how are we supposed to argue inside the Reality Distortion Field? Do we make-believe and assume that Apple's provided preconditions are true, or can we express concerns for the outstanding issues? I don't understand how these real-world flaws are somehow unjustified in conversation. You're allowed to hold Apple to adversarial levels of scrutiny if you take security seriously. > Especially when none of the alternatives are even trying. Apple is the largest company in the world and by many metrics (and points of comparison) isn't even doing the bare minimum in managing public trust. Whenever you are shown a whitepaper without the means to validate the contents yourself, you are being fed what is called "marketing" in the tech circles. You don't have to feel bad about being tricked though, it's the same thing that fools investors and overly-faithful engineers. Whitepapers are whitepapers, handpicked security audits are handpicked security audits, and code is code. There is no blurring of the lines. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
deanCommie 2y ago
Is that true? https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/aws-nitro-system-gets-independent-affirmation-of-its-confidential-compute-capabilities/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/aws-nitro-system-gets-i...
roca 2y ago
> For other services to leak their data, all it takes is for one employee to do something they shouldn't. This is not true for Google, at least. I know because I work at Google. So I wonder how accurate your knowledge of Meta, Microsoft etc is.
- andruby 2y ago
  Without revealing things under NDA, what could you share about what more it would take?
  - mattlondon 2y ago
    https://archive.is/HFlx1 https://archive.is/HFlx1 is one example of the lengths they are going to - third parties running entire Google cloud software stack (i.e. the GCP stuff we all know, and the underlying infrastructure too) in their own data center that is entirely air-gapped from Google itself. This is a huge undertaking.
    - qmarchi 2y ago
      There's a huge difference in what GDC-Airgapped runs on and what is actually running in GCP. Airgapped is based on top of Kubernetes, and it's using mostly off the shelf components for networking and compute. GCP is based on top of Borg, using custom networking and computer hardware (though manufacturers by a partner). As a note, not only is access without a support token alertable (goes to your skip level), there's a distinct level of "I'm not even going to build the tool to enable this". Which makes being in support a b**. If you want access to something, it's significantly easier to just ask the customer to do it themselves. Disc: Former TSE for Advanced Support.
- abalone 2y ago
  PCC is a whole different level. For example, you still have to trust that Google is doing what it says to control access. PCC makes it auditable and verifiable by clients when connecting to a node. You can also audit that the binaries don’t leak any data in, say, debug logs, which is definitely possible on GCP/Borg. PCC nodes are “cryptographically airtight.”
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
0xEF 2y ago
You raise the question I ask every time I spin up a VPS on one of the providers I use; do I trust this company? There's still no clear rules that say Apple, Akamai, AWS, etc have to protect me or my data if the right people start asking questions. I'm less worried about any hackers these days, since my dumb little projects aren't likely worth their time, but more worried about gov'ts that are increasingly surveillance-oriented who have an active interest in categorizing people into boxes. If I want to run a private alternative to Discord, for example, where I can safely express my dissent among friends and family who also have access, I can't really do it without going to the trouble of setting up my own hardware, first. Companies like Apple do try to protect their users, and I applaud them for that, but what happens when (not if) they flip?
mattlondon 2y ago
Citation needed. I know that there is a lot of work being done at the Big Cos to meet various regulations and conformance things to make sure that data is encrypted at rest and in transit with customer supplied keys, no unilateral access, end-to-end audit logging etc. You don't win the big big big hundreds-of-millions government/military/finance/healthcare contracts without these sort of things. The Big Cos are not going to ignore those sorts of opportunities, and are obviously putting in the work with hundreds/thousands of engineers implementing the provably-secure nature of their products, from supply-chain to hardware to software to customer support access.
- abalone 2y ago
  PCC is fundamentally more secure than merely encrypting at rest and auditing access. That still has a variety of attack vectors such as a software bug that leaks data. Apple is unable to access the data even if subpoenaed, for example, and this is provable via binary audits and client verification that they are communicating with an auditable node.
  - mattlondon 2y ago
    How is that any different in either direction? Bugs exist in any and all code. Encrypted data is unencryptable if you don't have the keys. I don't see that apple software is any different in that regard (just try using Mac OS for any length of time even on apple silicon and you run out of fingers to count obvious UI bugs pretty quickly just in day to day usage). And obviously AWS won't be able to decrypt your data without your keys either. The people running these huge multi-multi-billion clouds are not idiots making fundamental errors in security. This is why they all pay mega salaries for highly skilled people and offer five-figure bug bounties etc - they take this seriously. Would some random VPS or whatever be more likely to make errors like this, sure - but they are not in (and not expected to be) in the same league.
    - mattlondon 2y ago
      And just to confirm, less than 24 hours a post on HN here about a whole new batch of critical security bugs in Mac OS: https://jhftss.github.io/A-New-Era-of-macOS-Sandbox-Escapes/ https://jhftss.github.io/A-New-Era-of-macOS-Sandbox-Escapes/ I would not trust Apple any more or less than other other big-time cloud provider.
zelon88 2y ago
> how much one can trust Apple. > Apple's security posture is qualitatively better than Google, Meta or Microsoft. So Apple is telling me that it's ok to trust Apple because Apple trusts Apple? Gotcha.
- zaroth 2y ago
  That’s not, in fact, what Apple is saying.

by lukev 2y ago

harry8 2y ago

> Apple has a compelling value proposition. No. Apple has a proposition that /may/ be better than the current alternatives?

lukev 2y ago
If Apple is doing what they say they are, it is in fact better. No maybe about it. If they’re not, that means they are acting and intentionally deceiving the public security community which they are inviting to audit it. Is that something you actually think is happening? I think we need to be clear here. Your threat model may or may not be covered by the guarantees they are able to document, but just saying “well maybe they’re still doing some unspecified nefarious thing” is not contributing to the discussion. Especially when none of the alternatives are even trying.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Honestly I think this is a disingenuous defense. It's not insane to look at a closed-source project that is being partially-audited by cherrypicked organizations and say "that's not a very secure or trustworthy process". There is no reasonable accountability being offered to the community. It's like Ford selecting private safety inspectors to tell customers how great their safety is while conveniently leaving out any of the results from their federally-mandated crash tests. Is this really helping customers, or is it just blatant and masturbatory marketing? Apple has worked to deceive the public before, in both small and large ways. They lied about backdooring notifications for the US government when they were asked to[0], so it's not too hard to imagine it happening anywhere else in their systems. They're not taking a traditional approach to software transparency which is suspicious, and their "threat model" has professedly not protected against motivated requests for identifying information[1]. When the Mechanical Turk attempted to fool commoners watching it work, it was imperative to hide every trace of the human inside. The candle used to see inside the machine was masked by smoke from candles placed around the room, the cabinet was locked to avoid accidental opening, and people were told not to touch it because it was apparently 'expensive and fragile'. Looks like Apple is the ringleader this time around. > but just saying “well maybe they’re still doing some unspecified nefarious thing” is not contributing to the discussion. But Apple is saying the opposite, "well, maybe we're doing the detailed secure thing, ask these people we hired", and you're praising them for it. If calling out objective and obvious logical fallacies isn't contribution, then how are we supposed to argue inside the Reality Distortion Field? Do we make-believe and assume that Apple's provided preconditions are true, or can we express concerns for the outstanding issues? I don't understand how these real-world flaws are somehow unjustified in conversation. You're allowed to hold Apple to adversarial levels of scrutiny if you take security seriously. > Especially when none of the alternatives are even trying. Apple is the largest company in the world and by many metrics (and points of comparison) isn't even doing the bare minimum in managing public trust. Whenever you are shown a whitepaper without the means to validate the contents yourself, you are being fed what is called "marketing" in the tech circles. You don't have to feel bad about being tricked though, it's the same thing that fools investors and overly-faithful engineers. Whitepapers are whitepapers, handpicked security audits are handpicked security audits, and code is code. There is no blurring of the lines. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

deanCommie 2y ago

Is that true? https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/aws-nitro-system-gets-independent-affirmation-of-its-confidential-compute-capabilities/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/aws-nitro-system-gets-i...

roca 2y ago

> For other services to leak their data, all it takes is for one employee to do something they shouldn't. This is not true for Google, at least. I know because I work at Google. So I wonder how accurate your knowledge of Meta, Microsoft etc is.

andruby 2y ago
Without revealing things under NDA, what could you share about what more it would take?
- mattlondon 2y ago
  https://archive.is/HFlx1 https://archive.is/HFlx1 is one example of the lengths they are going to - third parties running entire Google cloud software stack (i.e. the GCP stuff we all know, and the underlying infrastructure too) in their own data center that is entirely air-gapped from Google itself. This is a huge undertaking.
  - qmarchi 2y ago
    There's a huge difference in what GDC-Airgapped runs on and what is actually running in GCP. Airgapped is based on top of Kubernetes, and it's using mostly off the shelf components for networking and compute. GCP is based on top of Borg, using custom networking and computer hardware (though manufacturers by a partner). As a note, not only is access without a support token alertable (goes to your skip level), there's a distinct level of "I'm not even going to build the tool to enable this". Which makes being in support a b**. If you want access to something, it's significantly easier to just ask the customer to do it themselves. Disc: Former TSE for Advanced Support.
abalone 2y ago
PCC is a whole different level. For example, you still have to trust that Google is doing what it says to control access. PCC makes it auditable and verifiable by clients when connecting to a node. You can also audit that the binaries don’t leak any data in, say, debug logs, which is definitely possible on GCP/Borg. PCC nodes are “cryptographically airtight.”

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

0xEF 2y ago

You raise the question I ask every time I spin up a VPS on one of the providers I use; do I trust this company? There's still no clear rules that say Apple, Akamai, AWS, etc have to protect me or my data if the right people start asking questions. I'm less worried about any hackers these days, since my dumb little projects aren't likely worth their time, but more worried about gov'ts that are increasingly surveillance-oriented who have an active interest in categorizing people into boxes. If I want to run a private alternative to Discord, for example, where I can safely express my dissent among friends and family who also have access, I can't really do it without going to the trouble of setting up my own hardware, first. Companies like Apple do try to protect their users, and I applaud them for that, but what happens when (not if) they flip?

mattlondon 2y ago

Citation needed. I know that there is a lot of work being done at the Big Cos to meet various regulations and conformance things to make sure that data is encrypted at rest and in transit with customer supplied keys, no unilateral access, end-to-end audit logging etc. You don't win the big big big hundreds-of-millions government/military/finance/healthcare contracts without these sort of things. The Big Cos are not going to ignore those sorts of opportunities, and are obviously putting in the work with hundreds/thousands of engineers implementing the provably-secure nature of their products, from supply-chain to hardware to software to customer support access.

abalone 2y ago
PCC is fundamentally more secure than merely encrypting at rest and auditing access. That still has a variety of attack vectors such as a software bug that leaks data. Apple is unable to access the data even if subpoenaed, for example, and this is provable via binary audits and client verification that they are communicating with an auditable node.
- mattlondon 2y ago
  How is that any different in either direction? Bugs exist in any and all code. Encrypted data is unencryptable if you don't have the keys. I don't see that apple software is any different in that regard (just try using Mac OS for any length of time even on apple silicon and you run out of fingers to count obvious UI bugs pretty quickly just in day to day usage). And obviously AWS won't be able to decrypt your data without your keys either. The people running these huge multi-multi-billion clouds are not idiots making fundamental errors in security. This is why they all pay mega salaries for highly skilled people and offer five-figure bug bounties etc - they take this seriously. Would some random VPS or whatever be more likely to make errors like this, sure - but they are not in (and not expected to be) in the same league.
  - mattlondon 2y ago
    And just to confirm, less than 24 hours a post on HN here about a whole new batch of critical security bugs in Mac OS: https://jhftss.github.io/A-New-Era-of-macOS-Sandbox-Escapes/ https://jhftss.github.io/A-New-Era-of-macOS-Sandbox-Escapes/ I would not trust Apple any more or less than other other big-time cloud provider.

zelon88 2y ago

> how much one can trust Apple. > Apple's security posture is qualitatively better than Google, Meta or Microsoft. So Apple is telling me that it's ok to trust Apple because Apple trusts Apple? Gotcha.

zaroth 2y ago
That’s not, in fact, what Apple is saying.