4 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 h

> 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 18d ago
EMPs 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.
- setopt 18d ago
  > EMPs are not "alien technology" Yup, you don’t even need nukes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...
  - Retr0id 18d ago
    or a bic lighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezo_ignition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezo_ignition
iugtmkbdfil834 18d ago
<< Apple Reference Image is not an id system; I think you have a point. I would only note that just because it is not explicitly designed as one, does not mean it will not be effectively utilized in that manner.
mitxela 18d ago
You'll still need an iPhone, the verification is linked to the specific iPhone, and the specific iPhone is linked to you.
- throw0101c 18d ago
  > You'll still need an iPhone, the verification is linked to the specific iPhone, and the specific iPhone is linked to you. Unless you use a friend's iPhone, or an iPhone you 'rented' for 5 minutes for $20 from someone on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace to take a picture on and then Airdrop to you.
  - mitxela 18d ago
    Buying a new overpriced phone every time you want to take a picture is certainly a decision.
  - autoexec 17d ago
    If they airdrop it to you that typically requires you to have an iphone or a mac and airdrop users are able to be identified and tracked so the photo could still be linked to your device. The EU forced apple to use Wi-Fi Aware though, so unless that's similarly vulnerable people in the EU might be able to avoid those issues.
    - propaganja 17d ago
      What? Just send the photo using literally any other method. Am I missing something, or did everyone just waste two minutes of their lives reading this?
      - tmp10423288442 17d ago
        Only wasted two minutes if you read really slowly
    - lxgr 17d ago
      Airdrop has been supported on many Android devices even outside the EU for a while now: https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ Or you could just email/WhatsApp/... it.
layer8 18d ago
> it's also not possible to determine if a pair of images came from the same device. It’s possible for Apple, as stated in the blog post (e.g. “which lets the device later produce signatures that Apple can attribute to that specific phone”).
- sandy_ilands 18d ago
  [flagged]
  - meindnoch 17d ago
    Fuck off, bot.
RobotToaster 18d ago
> So… a nation-state can't really do anything here unless they acquire alien technology. At least for the image itself, using direct projection onto the sensor (in a way similar to a retinal projector or film recorder) would be difficult to detect I imagine?
- wildzzz 17d ago
  They mention something about image heuristics typical of an iPhone image, that may mean that this reference mode takes a spatial image using dual sensors that help convince the PCC that it's an image of something real. Or perhaps it uses a lidar sensor, both lidar and reference mode are only offered on the Pro models. The whole camera system is one module so it could be using all of it. Regardless, you'd need a pretty complex setup and a deep understanding of the image sensors to project something that looks real. We really don't know what is in that first lump of signed sensor data. But at the end of the day, even if you manage to get a fake reference image, it's still on the person making the claim to show that the content of the image is real. A reference image of a document is useless, the physical document could be a forgery. A photo of people could be refuted with alibis during the timestamp window (max 15 minutes it sounds like?). A photo of property damage doesn't prove how or when it happened.
coldtea 18d ago
>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. Apple knows the iphone the reference image was uploaded from, so, yes, there is.
- jclardy 18d ago
  It doesn't, as it is run through an Oblivious HTTP relay run by a third party before getting to Apple's servers. So it has no IP information, and the requests use anonymous access tokens. It is probably possible for an entity to break it, but it would require live access to both Apple and the third party (Likely Cloudflare) servers. And that is assuming there is only one third party routing OHTTP requests, otherwise you would need to monitor all of them, in real time, since the requests are transient.
  - cobbzilla 17d ago
    Apple gets the device-signed image and replaces with a PCC signature to preserve anonymity. > The final reference image is instead signed by Apple’s signing service, after validation by PCC. So, if compelled, Apple could theoretically tell someone if two images came from the same camera.
    - lxgr 17d ago
      I wonder why they're not doing something like DAA [1], which achieves the same privacy properties without a centralized server. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation
    - colejohnson66 17d ago
      Still, "the same camera" isn't "this person" without more information.
      - cobbzilla 17d ago
        sure but if you can tie “this person” to “this one photo”, then for any photo, Apple can (again, theoretically) identify all photos by that person. it’s one step removed from identity. fwiw i think this is an unambiguous improvement over current post-sensor attestations, it’s just good to explore the edges
monocasa 18d ago
Nation states almost certainly have the ability to extract the private keys out of an image sensor and SEP. Outside of superpowers even if you're willing to do it destructively. They can then sign their own fraudulent images.
- autoexec 17d ago
  The NSA has probably already forced Apple to hand the keys over to them.
  - propaganja 17d ago
    Apple would be legally restricted from disclosing any government compromises, while still claiming their systems are secure and operating as intended in general. We already know it's happening right now, and they know we know, but we can't do shit about it.
    - alwillis 17d ago
      > Apple would be legally restricted from disclosing any government compromises, while still claiming their systems are secure and operating as intended in general. I'm aware. The point is they can't give the NSA something they don't have. The photo sensor generates its own ECDSA P-256 signing key pair and never releases the private half. Every device has a unique key pair and the private key is unavailable… there's not a way to give the NSA that would help them. The system is setup so that the image data, meta data, etc can't be accessed by anyone including Apple.
      - microtonal 17d ago
        I believe them, but the process is hard to check. How do we verify that they don’t have the sensor burn in a private key generated by them? (Similar to how many PGP hardware keys allow generating a private key on-device or writing your own provided key.)
    - alwillis 17d ago
walrus01 17d ago
> 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 You think that this won't be used as additional data by the various competing companies who have implemented "take a live still or video selfie of yourself with your phone and show us your ID cards" for identity verification purposes?
JW_00000 17d ago
> 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. Some banking apps nowadays ask you to upload a photo of your ID and then use the webcam/selfie camera to confirm that's it's really you (sometimes asking you to move your head in a particular way). But how trustworthy is that process really? Apple Reference Image could be (part of) a solution, by certifying that both images were taken by the same device around the same time.
- CrazyStat 17d ago
  > Apple Reference Image could be (part of) a solution, by certifying that both images were taken by the same device This is explicitly not possible, as the post you were replying to pointed out.
  - deleted 17d ago
    [deleted]
tencentshill 17d ago
I can tell its 'shopped because of the pixels
PunchyHamster 17d ago
The described scheme links the image to the device's signing key > 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. How would they do that ? There is only one signed key of the device
startup_zombie_ 17d ago
[dead]
appletrotter 17d ago
Looks like you saw the word ID and went off. OP never called it an ID system
cvoss 17d ago
> You have it all wrong. > Apple Reference Image is not an id system GP does not have it all wrong. A company desiring you to prove your identity often asks for a photograph of your government ID. Now that this is easily faked, it is reasonable to expect that the company will ask for a verifiably authentic photograph of your government ID. That the Apple Reference Image itself is not traceable to the device/user is beside the point in this use case.
- slester 17d ago
  Why would anyone be using images of government IDs when modern documents have NFC chips with the data, signed and with anti-cloning mechanisms on them? If they can verify an Apple Reference Image they can verify an NFC document.
  - JumpCrisscross 17d ago
    > If they can verify an Apple Reference Image they can verify an NFC document Interfacing with images is easy. Interfacing with NFC takes work. I have experienced precisely zero identity-verification workflows which NFC'd anything, and that includes my banks, which could easily ask for my debit card's NFC but don't.
    - inquirerGeneral 17d ago
      [dead]
    - lxgr 17d ago
      ICAO doc 9303 validation is about 10 lines in Python (on top of importing the right packages) last time I did it around 2012. I doubt it has become harder since then.
      - fweimer 17d ago
        Was the public key directory even operational in 2012? What about revocation checking? I think processing that information is mandatory now, but probably was optional/largely unimplemented in 2012. But maybe I'm off by five years or so?
lxgr 17d ago
No, you just didn't understand GPs point, i.e. that an image provenance/authentication system (such as Apple Reference Image) can eventually become a load-bearing and by extension anticompetitive component in a larger authentication/identity verification scheme. > a nation-state can't really do anything here unless they acquire alien technology. Alien technology such as NSLs or supply chain attacks against Apple?
solarkraft 17d ago
You seem to have it wrong. You don’t need an identification system for these use cases, you only need exactly what the tech does.
illiac786 17d ago
How is stealing/extracting a private key alien technology? Or even more simple, subpoena a private key to create fake authentic compromising pictures of pesky political opponents.

Retr0id 18d ago

EMPs 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.

setopt 18d ago
> EMPs are not "alien technology" Yup, you don’t even need nukes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...
- Retr0id 18d ago
  or a bic lighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezo_ignition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezo_ignition

iugtmkbdfil834 18d ago

<< Apple Reference Image is not an id system; I think you have a point. I would only note that just because it is not explicitly designed as one, does not mean it will not be effectively utilized in that manner.

mitxela 18d ago

You'll still need an iPhone, the verification is linked to the specific iPhone, and the specific iPhone is linked to you.

throw0101c 18d ago
> You'll still need an iPhone, the verification is linked to the specific iPhone, and the specific iPhone is linked to you. Unless you use a friend's iPhone, or an iPhone you 'rented' for 5 minutes for $20 from someone on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace to take a picture on and then Airdrop to you.
- mitxela 18d ago
  Buying a new overpriced phone every time you want to take a picture is certainly a decision.
- autoexec 17d ago
  If they airdrop it to you that typically requires you to have an iphone or a mac and airdrop users are able to be identified and tracked so the photo could still be linked to your device. The EU forced apple to use Wi-Fi Aware though, so unless that's similarly vulnerable people in the EU might be able to avoid those issues.
  - propaganja 17d ago
    What? Just send the photo using literally any other method. Am I missing something, or did everyone just waste two minutes of their lives reading this?
    - tmp10423288442 17d ago
      Only wasted two minutes if you read really slowly
  - lxgr 17d ago
    Airdrop has been supported on many Android devices even outside the EU for a while now: https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ Or you could just email/WhatsApp/... it.

layer8 18d ago

> it's also not possible to determine if a pair of images came from the same device. It’s possible for Apple, as stated in the blog post (e.g. “which lets the device later produce signatures that Apple can attribute to that specific phone”).

sandy_ilands 18d ago
[flagged]
- meindnoch 17d ago
  Fuck off, bot.

RobotToaster 18d ago

> So… a nation-state can't really do anything here unless they acquire alien technology. At least for the image itself, using direct projection onto the sensor (in a way similar to a retinal projector or film recorder) would be difficult to detect I imagine?

wildzzz 17d ago
They mention something about image heuristics typical of an iPhone image, that may mean that this reference mode takes a spatial image using dual sensors that help convince the PCC that it's an image of something real. Or perhaps it uses a lidar sensor, both lidar and reference mode are only offered on the Pro models. The whole camera system is one module so it could be using all of it. Regardless, you'd need a pretty complex setup and a deep understanding of the image sensors to project something that looks real. We really don't know what is in that first lump of signed sensor data. But at the end of the day, even if you manage to get a fake reference image, it's still on the person making the claim to show that the content of the image is real. A reference image of a document is useless, the physical document could be a forgery. A photo of people could be refuted with alibis during the timestamp window (max 15 minutes it sounds like?). A photo of property damage doesn't prove how or when it happened.

coldtea 18d ago

>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. Apple knows the iphone the reference image was uploaded from, so, yes, there is.

jclardy 18d ago
It doesn't, as it is run through an Oblivious HTTP relay run by a third party before getting to Apple's servers. So it has no IP information, and the requests use anonymous access tokens. It is probably possible for an entity to break it, but it would require live access to both Apple and the third party (Likely Cloudflare) servers. And that is assuming there is only one third party routing OHTTP requests, otherwise you would need to monitor all of them, in real time, since the requests are transient.
- cobbzilla 17d ago
  Apple gets the device-signed image and replaces with a PCC signature to preserve anonymity. > The final reference image is instead signed by Apple’s signing service, after validation by PCC. So, if compelled, Apple could theoretically tell someone if two images came from the same camera.
  - lxgr 17d ago
    I wonder why they're not doing something like DAA [1], which achieves the same privacy properties without a centralized server. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation
  - colejohnson66 17d ago
    Still, "the same camera" isn't "this person" without more information.
    - cobbzilla 17d ago
      sure but if you can tie “this person” to “this one photo”, then for any photo, Apple can (again, theoretically) identify all photos by that person. it’s one step removed from identity. fwiw i think this is an unambiguous improvement over current post-sensor attestations, it’s just good to explore the edges

monocasa 18d ago

Nation states almost certainly have the ability to extract the private keys out of an image sensor and SEP. Outside of superpowers even if you're willing to do it destructively. They can then sign their own fraudulent images.

autoexec 17d ago
The NSA has probably already forced Apple to hand the keys over to them.
- propaganja 17d ago
  Apple would be legally restricted from disclosing any government compromises, while still claiming their systems are secure and operating as intended in general. We already know it's happening right now, and they know we know, but we can't do shit about it.
  - alwillis 17d ago
    > Apple would be legally restricted from disclosing any government compromises, while still claiming their systems are secure and operating as intended in general. I'm aware. The point is they can't give the NSA something they don't have. The photo sensor generates its own ECDSA P-256 signing key pair and never releases the private half. Every device has a unique key pair and the private key is unavailable… there's not a way to give the NSA that would help them. The system is setup so that the image data, meta data, etc can't be accessed by anyone including Apple.
    - microtonal 17d ago
      I believe them, but the process is hard to check. How do we verify that they don’t have the sensor burn in a private key generated by them? (Similar to how many PGP hardware keys allow generating a private key on-device or writing your own provided key.)
  - alwillis 17d ago

walrus01 17d ago

> 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 You think that this won't be used as additional data by the various competing companies who have implemented "take a live still or video selfie of yourself with your phone and show us your ID cards" for identity verification purposes?

JW_00000 17d ago

> 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. Some banking apps nowadays ask you to upload a photo of your ID and then use the webcam/selfie camera to confirm that's it's really you (sometimes asking you to move your head in a particular way). But how trustworthy is that process really? Apple Reference Image could be (part of) a solution, by certifying that both images were taken by the same device around the same time.

CrazyStat 17d ago
> Apple Reference Image could be (part of) a solution, by certifying that both images were taken by the same device This is explicitly not possible, as the post you were replying to pointed out.
- deleted 17d ago
  [deleted]

tencentshill 17d ago

I can tell its 'shopped because of the pixels

PunchyHamster 17d ago

The described scheme links the image to the device's signing key > 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. How would they do that ? There is only one signed key of the device

startup_zombie_ 17d ago

[dead]

appletrotter 17d ago

Looks like you saw the word ID and went off. OP never called it an ID system

cvoss 17d ago

> You have it all wrong. > Apple Reference Image is not an id system GP does not have it all wrong. A company desiring you to prove your identity often asks for a photograph of your government ID. Now that this is easily faked, it is reasonable to expect that the company will ask for a verifiably authentic photograph of your government ID. That the Apple Reference Image itself is not traceable to the device/user is beside the point in this use case.

slester 17d ago
Why would anyone be using images of government IDs when modern documents have NFC chips with the data, signed and with anti-cloning mechanisms on them? If they can verify an Apple Reference Image they can verify an NFC document.
- JumpCrisscross 17d ago
  > If they can verify an Apple Reference Image they can verify an NFC document Interfacing with images is easy. Interfacing with NFC takes work. I have experienced precisely zero identity-verification workflows which NFC'd anything, and that includes my banks, which could easily ask for my debit card's NFC but don't.
  - inquirerGeneral 17d ago
    [dead]
  - lxgr 17d ago
    ICAO doc 9303 validation is about 10 lines in Python (on top of importing the right packages) last time I did it around 2012. I doubt it has become harder since then.
    - fweimer 17d ago
      Was the public key directory even operational in 2012? What about revocation checking? I think processing that information is mandatory now, but probably was optional/largely unimplemented in 2012. But maybe I'm off by five years or so?

lxgr 17d ago

No, you just didn't understand GPs point, i.e. that an image provenance/authentication system (such as Apple Reference Image) can eventually become a load-bearing and by extension anticompetitive component in a larger authentication/identity verification scheme. > a nation-state can't really do anything here unless they acquire alien technology. Alien technology such as NSLs or supply chain attacks against Apple?

solarkraft 17d ago

You seem to have it wrong. You don’t need an identification system for these use cases, you only need exactly what the tech does.

illiac786 17d ago

How is stealing/extracting a private key alien technology? Or even more simple, subpoena a private key to create fake authentic compromising pictures of pesky political opponents.