5 ms·
This is really clever from Apple. The journalist use case is just the PR story. This will be really useful for identity verification and insurance apps, and has
by tgsovlerkhgsel 10d ago
This is really clever from Apple. The journalist use case is just the PR story. This will be really useful for identity verification and insurance apps, and has the potential to shift from "you need a smartphone to be able to live normally" to "you need an iPhone to be able to live normally".
There are already plenty of insurances that require you to submit claims through a smartphone app that tries to essentially do this by capturing sensor metadata etc. - those don't need to be nation-state resilient, just Joe the Crackhead Insurance Scammer resilient, so this works. Likewise, more and more things online require identity verification (either officially or disguised as age verification).
Edit: And while "a nation state actor can spoof this" is a problem for the journalism use case, the insurance/ID verification use cases are perfectly fine with anything that raises the bar but could be bypassed with enough effort. Also, the journalism use case suffers from the same fundamental issue all of these use cases suffer from: People will "verify" the picture by looking at the repost of a screenshot of the verification UI, not by verifying the original themselves.
- doctorpangloss 10d ago> People will "verify" the picture by looking at the repost of a screenshot of the verification UI, not by verifying the original themselves. True. > raises the bar but could be bypassed with enough effort. Anyone can spoof this. Apple cannot stop spam iMessages. They can't stop someone from rendering their privileged UI inside a browser viewport. People copy and paste remote script executions from convincing captchas. This whole provenance thing is a red herring. You agree with me, but there's truly not a single application for this that won't be exploited.
- itake 10d agoI don’t understand what this brings to the table beyond what we’re currently doing. Insurance companies can have a native app and require the device’s camera. Companies already have tools to combat a liveliness check. Even if you’re using a modified app that pulls from the photo album instead of the camera? A video recording with the appropriate liveness verification easily avoids that mess.
- ben_w 10d agoAs per opening paragraph of link, AI fakes are a thing. It's been possible to do a live video deepfake for a long time now, but as with all new tech, law and society are taking their sweet time to understand the risks; IMO this is the other side of the same coin as some infamous tech comments on consumer products: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 and https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rob_Malda https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rob_Malda NVIDIA suggested AI fakes controlled with face tracking input as a compression technique just for reducing video call bandwidth requirements (to ~117 bytes per frame). They did that six years ago: https://www.dpreview.com/news/5756257699/nvidia-research-develops-a-neural-network-to-replace-traditional-video-compression/ https://www.dpreview.com/news/5756257699/nvidia-research-dev... As we're now in an AI race, even NVIDIA's specific technique has flaws which all the current tools can detect, there's never any guarantee of this continuing to be the case. That said, in the case of Apple, they're historically followers not leaders despite the public image they like to present about innovation, and I'd expect this method to be flawed from day one even if we weren't reading a corporate blog post written in a self-congratulatory tone I find almost as off-putting as when AI write.
- itake 10d agoYou don’t even need an AI deepfake to edit a video. AI deepfake or edit video doesn’t pass liveliness checks without all the c2pa or reference image song and pony show. Insurance companies can monitor the light reflections from the flash that they control or monitor the accelerometer and compare the accelerometer values with the video that they receive. They could also just update their app to stop accepting photos from the album.
- lxgr 10d ago> Insurance companies can monitor the light reflections from the flash that they control or monitor the accelerometer and compare the accelerometer values with the video that they receive. All of this data can be spoofed if it's not somehow authenticated. > They could also just update their app to stop accepting photos from the album. Doesn't help at all if the spoofed data is arriving via spoofed hardware.
- bawolff 10d agoThe main way we combat insurance fraud is by throwing people in jail who do it. I dont think AI faked photos is a major cause of fraud.
- tempay 10d agoAt least in the UK this seems to be a growing problem and jail isn't a scalable solution. See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2rr9pg4jzo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2rr9pg4jzo
- gambiting 10d agoLike a lot of things in the UK, the problem isn't the harshness of the law, it's the lack of prosecution. It doesn't matter what the punishment is when criminals know that the crime is extremely unlikely to be investigated or make it to trial.
- RobotToaster 10d ago> it's the lack of prosecution. The UK allows private prosecution, if it was a real problem the insurance companies would be using it, instead of attempting to make the state pay for it.
- tempay 10d agoYou still need to be able to realise something is fraudulent and pursuing prosecution has a significant cost to the insurer that is likely to be a net-loss financially. Not to mention the reputational risk of the public believing you prosecuted someone wrongly.
- Telemakhos 10d agoInsurance agencies worried about fraud could just do what they did prior to smartphones: have you bring the car to a claims adjuster at your local office. I’ve brought cars to be inspected, because I got T-boned at an intersection by a careless driver before smartphones existed; it was reasonably quick and hassle-free.
- Topfi 10d ago> […] the potential to shift from "you need a smartphone to be able to live normally" to "you need an iPhone to be able to live normally". Why do you believe Android manufacturers and SOC makers like Qualcomm won’t be able to offer a similar solution?
- rickdeckard 10d agoNot the OP, but yes, other vendors will be able to support that as well. But a camera sensor that has 1. a public/private key exchanged during device-production (production-cost), 2. the capability to reboot in a cryptographic mode (R&D / component cost) and 3. a cloud-service which then processes the raw data to create a JPG (operational cost) comes at a premium. Why should this premium be applied on a 99 USD Smartphone? Which is my whole puzzle on this vector: If the big benefit is for insurance/ID-verification, which apply cost-saving by offloading their process to the untrusted customer, how much they can offload this by requiring their customer to own a 1000+ USD smartphone to provide THEIR service...? The most I can imagine is insurances offloading their work to OTHER companies, NOT trusting them and therefore requiring them to own a 1000+ USD Smartphone. But even then, why not use a third party app that also runs on a 3y old iPhone and a 99 USD Android device...?
- Topfi 10d agoWe have 99USD smartphones with 1080p+ AMOLEDs, massive 5k amp batteries and very performant SOCs (e.g. Galaxy A16) among other costly, but not vital niceties. I struggle to see how cost could be a factor here.
- rickdeckard 10d ago> I struggle to see how cost could be a factor here. Okay. In good faith, I'll go with you: If COST is not a factor, why does the Galaxy A16 still have no OIS (Optical Image Stabilization)? Unlike this trusted-imaging service, OIS would be a feature for increased user-experience which is highly-matured and exists in Smartphones since 2013. The answer is COST: A camera-module with OIS is a more-expensive component than a module without it. And that's ONLY the component-cost: A OIS-camera doesn't come with increased cost in device-production (it's just another component to place and assemble), no increased cost in R&D (the tech is very mature, all the SW is there) and no running costs (there are no cloud-services required to operate OIS)
- rickdeckard 10d agoI don't understand the vector of this: An insurance would either assign #1 an insurance agent or mechanic to initially assess the damage (trusted) or #2 ask the customer to send pictures (untrusted). Tendency is #2 for cost-saving of the insurance, and 3rd party apps are used to execute this. Now the idea is that the insurance company discontinues the App and the (untrusted) customer must have an iPhone 18 Pro to make an insurance claim? Or is the insurance agent / mechanic an untrusted entity who will now be required to have an iPhone 18 Pro? What is the fraud vector here, and how can the insurance service provider continue cost-saving on damage-assessment by offloading to the customer, if the customer is required to own a specific device?
- yreg 10d ago> Now the idea is that the insurance company discontinues the App and the (untrusted) customer must have an iPhone 18 Pro to make an insurance claim? In a couple of years it will be almost any iPhone instead of 18 Pro. And if it catches on, other phone vendors will provide a similar service.
- rickdeckard 10d agoSo the insurance would then, instead of contracting the current service-provider for the 3rd party app, contract also with Apple and, let's say Samsung? And then stop the 3rd party app which is vendor-agnostic and works on all devices? I'd say that's unlikely. IF that's an industry this Apple-feature will disrupt, it seems it will barely have an impact on the process of insurance companies themselves, but will actually disrupt the service-provider industry FOR insurances: The insurance won't be able to stop their existing 3rd party cost-saving, as it provides the largest device-coverage for offloading to the customer. Instead, either the insurance or the 3rd party service-provider will have to pay Apple in addition to make use of this feature, with the hopes that the provided data will reduce fraud. Which brings me back to my actual question: What is the fraud-vector here?
- Topfi 10d ago> So the insurance would then, instead of contracting the current service-provider for the 3rd party app, contract also with Apple and, let's say Samsung? The industry has some extensive experience in independently verifying signatures, I don't see how the manufacturers factor in here. And for app features, just ask banks how integrating biometrics, payment services, etc. goes. Tends to be preferred, once Apple and Google Pay became fully available here in Austria, banks dropped their own NFC payment solutions in rapid succession.
- devonsolomon 10d agoI think you’re on the ball, but also all KYC flows, photo proof for shipping returns (Chinese platforms were getting destroyed on this) etc. etc. It’s a very very clever solution and a very opportune time.
- intrasight 10d ago> looking at the repost of a screenshot of the verification UI I don't follow. It's my user agent that's verifying the image, and my device will tell me that it's not verified.
- aacid 10d agoYrs; that is what world needs, complete dependency on one giga corporation... I cannot wait for it to happen!
- bluebarbet 10d agoEmpty snark adds nothing to the conversation.
- alwillis 10d ago> This is really clever from Apple. The journalist use case is just the PR story. This will be really useful for identity verification and insurance apps, and has the potential to shift from "you need a smartphone to be able to live normally" to "you need an iPhone to be able to live normally". You have it all wrong. Apple Reference Image is not an id system; it's primarily a way to attest that the pixels recorded by the camera sensor have not been altered in any way; the pixels, metadata and timestamp are all cryptographically signed. There's no way to link a reference image to a person; it's also not possible to determine if a pair of images came from the same device. > And while "a nation state actor can spoof this" is a problem for the journalism use case This is incorrect: When the image sensor is first initialized in the factory, it creates a cryptographic signing identity, sharing only the public key with the factory. The SEP similarly creates a separately-attested signing identity. These identities are bound together into the device manifest, allowing us to later check whether a particular sensor and SEP are from the same device. The final signature on a reference image is a composite post-quantum signature combining RSA-3072 and ML-DSA-87. To our knowledge, Apple Reference Image is the only image provenance system that provides quantum-secure defenses. So… a nation-state can't really do anything here unless they acquire alien technology. If something crazy happens (solar flare or EMP?), a fraudulent reference image can be revoked. > Also, the journalism use case suffers from the same fundamental issue all of these use cases suffer from: People will "verify" the picture by looking at the repost of a screenshot of the verification UI, not by verifying the original themselves. I would imagine there will be a way to confirm an Apple Reference Image on the web. Pretty soon, 3rd parties will be able to verify the image themselves: Reference images can be viewed in the Photos app alongside the main image, like a digital negative, to visually compare the two assets and determine if any edits were made. APIs are available in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 for third-party apps to enable viewing of these reference images.
- Retr0id 10d agoEMPs are not "alien technology", and you don't need to be a nation state either. That said, Apple's hardware security is generally very good.
- 10d ago
- layer8 10d agoThe one issue I have it that it lets Apple determine if two reference images were taken by he same defice. In particular if one of the images is of an ID, or otherwise contains identifying information, that is a privacy downside, and authorities can subpoena Apple to check for and reveal this connection between multiple images.
- megous 10d agoSadly, people will happily go with this crypto-lockdown until there's no personal computing whatsoever. Only way to fight is not to play, or hack this in some way.
- FireBeyond 10d ago> This is really clever from Apple. The journalist use case is just the PR story. This will be really useful for identity verification and insurance apps This is definitely not an Apple thing, though the use profile is more ubiquitous. Canon had, more than twenty years ago, when they first started making DSLRs, the question of "If we want law enforcement to use these, how do we handle the inevitable questions?" and as a result built out the option to digitally sign the raw sensor data in-camera so the raw file could be pointed to in court with an attestation of image integrity.
- qurren 10d agoI think the biggest downside here is we're moving toward a world in which only Apple and Google and a few other privileged manufacturers can make cameras.
- dwaite 10d agoIdentity Verification is the realm of digital credentials. The goal isn't to make putting a driving license or passport on a desk and to verify the picture is of authentic pixels, but to move to mDL / EIDAS2 technology to have a digital representation of a driving license/passport. This tech would just indicate that they got authentic pixels capturing a potentially fake license. Likewise, this doesn't help as much as you'd like with most bespoke remote selfie verification systems, since this doesn't support video, doesn't protect against MITM and adds a remote processing delay that breaks any time-of-flight measurement. It shuffles the risks around.
- EmbarrassedHelp 9d agoNobody is worry about making the jobs of age verification companies trying to violate user privacy any easier. In fact we should be moving towards new ways of circumventing these attacks on privacy.
- lr1970 10d agoAnd it also makes Apple's Private Compute to process all the pictures taken by all the iphones. Can we trust their privacy preservation against a court order?