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Tim Cook on iMessage Security: It’s Encrypted, and We Don’t Have a Key

146 points by Tangokat 12y ago

samirahmed 12y ago
Is actually possible to not have the ability to decrypt messages remotely? At first I thought that if just an iphone held the encryption keys and these were not on apple servers this statement could be true ... however considering that imessage can be setup on a Mac and an iPhone via your Apple ID ... its more likely that this statement is just hyperbole for the Apple's approach to privacy
- LeoPanthera 12y ago
  Apple previously said that in order to read your iMessages they would have to re-architect the entire system. Technically, they could in fact do that, so if they really wanted to, they could. But the system is not currently designed to allow message interception. The details about how it operates can be found in the iOS Security PDF from February: http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.p...
  - pilif 12y ago
    >But the system is not currently designed to allow message interception. The details about how it operates can be found in the iOS Security PDF from February The system is currently designed to allow very easy message interception by just sending both Alice and Bob a fake public key of their respective communications partner. You have zero control over what public keys your phone encrypts data with.
- _jsn 12y ago
  "When a user turns on iMessage, the device generates two pairs of keys for use with the service: an RSA 1280-bit key for encryption and an ECDSA 256-bit key for signing. For each key pair, the private keys are saved in the device’s keychain and the public keys are sent to Apple’s directory service" "The user’s outgoing message is individually encrypted using AES-128 in CTR mode for each of the recipient’s devices, signed using the sender’s private key, and then dis- patched to the APNs for delivery." Source: http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.p... When you send an iMessage, you actually send a separate encrypted and signed copy for each recipient device. So, it is possible, but these are the lengths you have to go to.
  - codeka 12y ago
    But they could just inject a "fake" recipient device with their own public/private key and decrypt messages as they transit the system. They might not be able to decrypt messages you've sent in the past, but I can see no reason why they couldn't read messages as you send them if they wanted to (or were required by a wiretapping agency, for example). I also recall a while ago a researcher who showed that if you forgot your iCloud password, there was a way to get Apple to reset the password and give you access to all your previously-stored data. If they had no way to decrypt your data remotely, that should be impossible.
    - _jsn 12y ago
      On the first point, you're coreect. That's also why you get those extremely annoying modal dialogs each time a device/key pair is added to your iMessage account, because a device added without your knowledge could be used to eavesdrop on you.
      - pilif 12y ago
        You only get that dialog for the devices you add. The public key added by the NSA or Apple themselves does not trigger the dialog. (explanatory note as the sarcasm in the comment might not have been obvious: I do not know whether such a facility exists in the services or not, so this might or might not be true. But: The fact that it's possible that this "feature" already exists or can easily be added in the future, potentially even without an update of the client leads me to my current opinion which is that iMessage is not secure and all traffic is open to Apple, rogue employees at Apple and whatever government Apple is cooperating with).
    - tehwebguy 12y ago
      Exactly, you can reset your password and re-download all of your old messages.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      It is not impossible so long as there is a linked device that has access to the data. Was there a precise accounting of the state of the researcher's icloud account before the reset, and everything done during the reset?
lnanek2 12y ago
That isn't really definitive, because the NSA has required companies to change software to capture keys before. There was an encrypted email company who was told they have to start recording private keys used in their web client.
gear54rus 12y ago
These statements again... Time to get some downvotes, I guess. How do I know? How can I even know that YOUR own device for which YOU wrote software and YOU designed hardware (although it may be based on some standards, no one can guarantee it's unmodified) won't share my private information with YOU? How can I know that you're not sending my private key encrypted with your server's public key (one simple example of many) to your side? Am I supposed to take your word on it? No thanks. As much as I'm against Apple and their policy, these statements make no sense from anyone (Google, Apple, whatever). Unless you design your own phone from scratch, you can not be sure that it is secure (however, when you do that, all medium your phone may use is still not secure). It is simply not worth it. Anything in digital world is not secure (only a matter of attacker's determination and resources available to them) and there is no point in saying otherwise.
- MarkSweep 12y ago
  I tend to agree, it's much easier to just assume all online commutations are monitored than to try to escape the gaze of the five eyes (of Sauron). Maybe this attitude means they have already won?
  - gear54rus 12y ago
    For some reason I think only diversity may help. 1000s different systems built differently are harder to milk for useful information if user is smart.. Centralization is the enemy of privacy (centralized = compromised). Unless they have an AI which can analyze such systems' patterns at the speed of light and present solutions (which is not as unbelievable as self-conscious AI) but it's still more of a fiction. Really, the problem is not in tech, it's in people. We're not fixing this one anytime soon.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - gear54rus 12y ago
    It's just.. this statement barely has any meaning to it then. Carefully crafted sentences, yes, but what difference does it make to the outcome, to the end user? We most certainly know that iMessage (like any other service) is not secure and now we are also left pondering if he is telling the truth or not about something that doesn't even matter in the end :) Maybe I'm being too critical or maybe I'm missing something.
hadoukenio 12y ago
3 words - National Security Letter. Take what Timmy says with a grain of salt, until they should you the source code. Oh wait... Apple fan boys: bring on the downvotes, but enjoy your surveilling
- ejr 12y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but I imagine it has less to do with what you said and more with how you said it. NSLs as a "boogeyman" is a poor substitute for lacking evidence. So far, we know that these things are sent to US companies which are in the business of collecting and bartering data. While Apple has a corner of that market, it isn't its entirety. So here they have snippets of our information Ex: email, credit card, home address for app purchases. However, it's just as possible to use the phone normally without downloading a single app. That leaves the SIM provider holding the bag for your information ready to be collected by the authorities. Effectively, Apple washes its hands of your data on phone calls, but there is no reason to presume lies regarding backdoors on iMessage. Also, I'm not an "Apple fan boy". I'm just unconvinced of widespread eavesdropping at Apple and that they're willing to risk destroying such a massive advantage over Google's Hangouts platform.
  - efdee 12y ago
    In a post-Snowden world, when it comes to leaking your data, companies are guilty until proven innocent. That is the only sensible stance to take given what we have learned in the last year.
    - hadoukenio 12y ago
      This. The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells Congress that the NSA doesn't conduct intelligence on American citizens, and then later gets caught out. He committed Perjury without any ramifications. Why do people think that CEOs are telling the truth when they are all in the same boat paddling up shit river?
yeahmayb 12y ago
"Our business is not based on having information about you. You’re not our product. Our product are these, and this watch, and Macs and so forth. And so we run a very different company. I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. And you should really understand what’s happening to that data. And companies I think should be very transparent about it." Honestly, I am starting to see the wisdom behind consumers choosing the companies with these kinds of business models. Its not that I dont trust the companies -- I guess its that I accept that governments and laws transcend companies and their explicit arrangements with their consumers.
- camillomiller 12y ago
  For as much as you may criticize Apple for many things, you can't really say they are not sincere when they say something like this. A company has to make profits, and profits come from a well executed business plan. Apple's business plan is to sell hardware and create software and platforms that drive hardware sales. Collecting data for reasons that are not related to the functioning of a service makes no sense for the bottom line. Google makes profit selling ads crafted on people's data and a new controlled user accessing the Internet is entering its realm. That is good for the bottom line. It may be an oversimplification, but I guess that you can say a lot and get back to this. Anything that has to do with NSA mass surveillance, though, shouldn't be transposed on this discourse. Not Tim Cook, nor Larry Page, nor any other CEO, individually and in their function, can possibly know everything about their company. Fifth columns, NSA rats, unconstitutional secret requests of information... They are American citizens, running American organizations they have to comply to the rules or they may compromise billions of shareholders dollars. But are they lying to us right now? I think they are not, because it will hurt their bottom lines more than ever. Is Google in a weaker position than Apple because of the very nature of its business model based on data collection? Absolutely yes. The problem is ingrained with the system though and the only solution is to extirpate the cancer called NSA. I doubt it will happen anytime soon, though. We all love our gadgets and services too much, and we don't really have time to wrap our brain around such big problems for nerds.
epoxyhockey 12y ago
Apple is a PRISM participant, as of Oct 2012 (one year after Steve Jobs died). I highly doubt any iMessage is more secure than a plain text SMS sent via any cell carrier's network. Apple probably offers a sexy interface for the Feds to read everything. Reference: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-slide-51.jpg http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-sl...
- epoxyhockey 12y ago
  Do any down-voters care to offer a comment? Is it that one contests that Apple is a PRISM participant?
  - iLoch 12y ago
    I think you're being downvoted because you got a little too excited while bashing Apple. iMessage is most certainly more secure than plain text in most cases, save for the VERY exceptional case where the NSA might be watching IF they do have a key on your phone. Plus, anyone who's used Apple's partner portals knows they're just as capable of shitty design as everyone else.
    - spacefight 12y ago
      "In most cases" isn't enough any more these days. People are targeted alone by metadata - and killed too.
    - epoxyhockey 12y ago
      Thanks for the insight. Rather than excitement, I am actually most disappointed in Apple caving into the PRISM scheme because I hold them to a bit higher standard than other companies when it comes to privacy.. kind of like being told that Santa doesn't exist.
  - cbr 12y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but the leaked PRISM docs don't show "participation". They show that the NSA was getting the data. If they were doing it by, ex, inter-datacenter fiber tapping then Apple wouldn't have "participated" or even known about the leak.
pilif 12y ago
There is zero control over what public keys get handed over to your phone to encrypt an iMessage with. For all we know, whenever you want to send a message to $USER, your phone gets a public key for $USERs iPhone, her iPad and the NSA master key. Tim Cook can state that they can't decrypt the message all he wants, but as long as there's no control over what public keys we encrypt the message with, the statement that Apple or the NSA can't read the messages is a half-truth at best. Don't use iMessage for anything you wouldn't be using email for. Assume every message you send over iMessage to be public. >If the government laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can’t provide it. It’s encrypted and we don’t have a key. And so it’s sort of — the door is closed. But the government can (and probably has) force you to have the phones send a copy of every message to some government server encrypted with the government's public key. They don't need to subpoena messages - they already got them all.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > Assume every message you send over iMessage to be public. You should assume any message that you send over the internet to be public unless you're a crypto expert. And if you want to go one step further then you should probably consider anything you type into a computer to be public.
- mehrdada 12y ago
  "as long as there's no control over what public keys we encrypt the message with, the statement that Apple or the NSA can't read the messages is a half-truth at best." This. That said, it is reasonable to believe the way iMessage is architected would likely make mass surveillance harder in general, just like widespread use of SSL does, so it is not entirely useless either. The bigger problem IMO is that they then upload the message database unencrypted (from server's standpoint) to iCloud in the backup process (which is admittedly optional, but effectively on for most users). That, of course, is easily readable, as the celebrity hack shows.
  - dogecoinbase 12y ago
    make mass surveillance harder in general More specifically, it makes it so that Apple is not forced to conduct mass surveillance by giving up everything when they receive a legal wiretap order, in the vein of Lavabit. If you see someone else running a message system that has no way for the cops to read it, that should be a sign that it's insecure -- not technologically, but architecturally.
ruuki 12y ago
The tech heroes of our age are becoming some kind of politicians, this is very sad.
skuhn 12y ago
It's nice to see that he thinks user privacy is something valuable, and that this is an issue worth talking about. However, I think he's really only addressing one of the three ways that user data can be compromised when it's held by a company: 1. Selling or using it internally (e.g. Google's ad targeting) 2. Stolen by criminals (e.g. Apple's recent snafu) 3. Requisitioned by the government (e.g. Yahoo's daily fines for refusing to join PRISM) Data that isn't collected in the first place can't be lost, but that isn't always possible (and it often defeats the entire purpose of the service). I think he's mostly talking about the first one, that Apple hasn't built their business around harvesting user data to feed advertising or other systems. I think that's laudable. I would rather a company focus their energies on one product, rather than selling a byproduct of their real money maker. I also don't really like being the fuel for a free service -- I'd rather pay for what I use and have everything above board. Security is where I think Apple has its biggest problem with user privacy. Relative to companies like Google, they just aren't very good at running Internet services. Despite operating several huge services (iTunes, a CDN that handles iOS updates, iCloud, etc.), they aren't an Internet company at heart. Google and others are leaps and bounds above them in this regard. They can improve this with hiring and changing the culture in those groups, and I think they started this process a year or two ago. It will take some time, and they're never going to be the world's best at this stuff. Tim Cook touches on the third point a little, and some people think he is being disingenuous in his description of how iMessage works. I think that it doesn't really matter. It's great that Apple has designed a system that places an emphasis on keeping user conversations private, but there is literally nothing that they can do about government interference if they want to continue operating as a legal entity. I hope that they do everything in their power to curb government overreach. Ultimately the government will get what they want. Simply building a system designed to keep you from accessing the data that flows through it is not sufficient: you will be forced to subvert that system or face serious consequences. I strongly believe that the only way people will ever have privacy from the government again is to decentralize the Internet and the services that run on it. I doubt that a political solution is possible now that pandora's box has been opened, and it seems like it will only become more widespread as companies have to answer to more governments around the world and the technology to broadly intercept traffic becomes more commonplace.
natch 12y ago
This statement is not enough... there could still be a third party (e.g. law enforcement) with a key or for more plausible deniability, a portion of a key (n bits out of N), and the statement would still be true. If they can do so truthfully, they should also state that nobody else other than the user has a key or any portion of a key, and that there are no keys or portions of keys in escrow where anybody else can conceivably get at them.
Luker88 12y ago
It's Encrypted, and We Don't Have a Key. But it's not open source so you don't get to check. ... and we control the key distribution. We also do control your device, so technically, we don't need the key. Fixed that for him.
- spacefight 12y ago
  And we put music on your device without asking you.
Thesaurus 12y ago
Jobs is rolling over in his graves, Cook is a shill. Jobs kept the five-eyes out of Apple's shit until he croaked.
atmosx 12y ago
Let's take this to the extreme: If you are threat to the NSA, you'd use an iPhone to send a message because Tim Cook said it's encrypted? YES - NO - I DON'T KNOW ps. Let's wait for Apple to do a better job at keeping private naked pictures people make for fun using an iPhone and we'll talk iMessage encryption later.
chj 12y ago
"we don't have a key, at this moment". Come on, Apple is still able to get your messages. Next time when you set up your iPhone, and if the messages are downloaded to your new device, you know they have access as well.
lazylizard 12y ago
erm. "with every mention of 'encryption' comes the issue of 'key management'? " ? and possibly a subset of 'key management', 'key exchange'..?
KaiserPro 12y ago
Does that mean its just a ROT13 cipher? I mean its technically encrypted, but also doesn't need a key...
ganessh 12y ago
But the NSA do have the keys :p just kidding
scragg 12y ago
> we finally got an agreement from the administration to release how many times we had national security orders on Apple. And in a six month period, and we had to release a range, because they won’t let us say the exact number, it’s between zero and 250. That’s the lowest number you can quote. Zero to 250. So does anyone else think this might be a bad number (being so low)? If the NSA had access to everything, wouldn't you expect the official requests for data to be low and not because Apple doesn't store data or it's all encrypted anyway as Cook implies.
Istof 12y ago
all these claims are worthless when you are not even administrator on the device you use... (they have access to your messages before they get encrypted...)
aespinoza 12y ago
Honestly, I really don't care if they have the key or not. My concern is if they can read my messages. I am more worried about backdoors added to iMessage by Apple. This is known to happen often in Apple products, maybe for the purpose of Development or Support, but it is still there. That is exactly what I want to know. Because if Apple can use that backdoor, a patient hacker can too.
- MBCook 12y ago
  > This is known to happen often in Apple products, maybe for the purpose of Development or Support, but it is still there. Could you elaborate on this? Are you talking about the development tools that require your phone to be cabled to a laptop?
  - aespinoza 12y ago
    This is just one example: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2456967/security0/apple-inadvertently-admitted-to-ios-backdoor-forensics-expert.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2456967/security0/apple-... But if you google it, you'll find more.
- r00fus 12y ago
  What known backdoors?
blueking 12y ago
But the key is accessible through the backdoor we put in all your devices. Oh and we joined PRISM http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/2013-06-06_15h31_24.jpg http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/...
autism_hurts 12y ago
Wasn't there a leaked FBI PowerPoint that very explicitly stated that they can't intercept iMessages? (and it was a point of frustration)
tolmasky 12y ago
He should instead just have said "Have you tried iMessage?? Its a disaster, we couldn't pull messages out of there even if we wanted to. Be thankful anything shows up on the screen at all!"
kristianp 12y ago
Apparently skype uses encryption, according to: https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encryption https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encrypt...

146 points by Tangokat 12y ago

Is actually possible to not have the ability to decrypt messages remotely? At first I thought that if just an iphone held the encryption keys and these were not on apple servers this statement could be true ... however considering that imessage can be setup on a Mac and an iPhone via your Apple ID ... its more likely that this statement is just hyperbole for the Apple's approach to privacy

LeoPanthera 12y ago
Apple previously said that in order to read your iMessages they would have to re-architect the entire system. Technically, they could in fact do that, so if they really wanted to, they could. But the system is not currently designed to allow message interception. The details about how it operates can be found in the iOS Security PDF from February: http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.p...
- pilif 12y ago
  >But the system is not currently designed to allow message interception. The details about how it operates can be found in the iOS Security PDF from February The system is currently designed to allow very easy message interception by just sending both Alice and Bob a fake public key of their respective communications partner. You have zero control over what public keys your phone encrypts data with.
_jsn 12y ago
"When a user turns on iMessage, the device generates two pairs of keys for use with the service: an RSA 1280-bit key for encryption and an ECDSA 256-bit key for signing. For each key pair, the private keys are saved in the device’s keychain and the public keys are sent to Apple’s directory service" "The user’s outgoing message is individually encrypted using AES-128 in CTR mode for each of the recipient’s devices, signed using the sender’s private key, and then dis- patched to the APNs for delivery." Source: http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.p... When you send an iMessage, you actually send a separate encrypted and signed copy for each recipient device. So, it is possible, but these are the lengths you have to go to.
- codeka 12y ago
  But they could just inject a "fake" recipient device with their own public/private key and decrypt messages as they transit the system. They might not be able to decrypt messages you've sent in the past, but I can see no reason why they couldn't read messages as you send them if they wanted to (or were required by a wiretapping agency, for example). I also recall a while ago a researcher who showed that if you forgot your iCloud password, there was a way to get Apple to reset the password and give you access to all your previously-stored data. If they had no way to decrypt your data remotely, that should be impossible.
  - _jsn 12y ago
    On the first point, you're coreect. That's also why you get those extremely annoying modal dialogs each time a device/key pair is added to your iMessage account, because a device added without your knowledge could be used to eavesdrop on you.
    - pilif 12y ago
      You only get that dialog for the devices you add. The public key added by the NSA or Apple themselves does not trigger the dialog. (explanatory note as the sarcasm in the comment might not have been obvious: I do not know whether such a facility exists in the services or not, so this might or might not be true. But: The fact that it's possible that this "feature" already exists or can easily be added in the future, potentially even without an update of the client leads me to my current opinion which is that iMessage is not secure and all traffic is open to Apple, rogue employees at Apple and whatever government Apple is cooperating with).
  - tehwebguy 12y ago
    Exactly, you can reset your password and re-download all of your old messages.
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    It is not impossible so long as there is a linked device that has access to the data. Was there a precise accounting of the state of the researcher's icloud account before the reset, and everything done during the reset?

lnanek2 12y ago

That isn't really definitive, because the NSA has required companies to change software to capture keys before. There was an encrypted email company who was told they have to start recording private keys used in their web client.

gear54rus 12y ago

These statements again... Time to get some downvotes, I guess. How do I know? How can I even know that YOUR own device for which YOU wrote software and YOU designed hardware (although it may be based on some standards, no one can guarantee it's unmodified) won't share my private information with YOU? How can I know that you're not sending my private key encrypted with your server's public key (one simple example of many) to your side? Am I supposed to take your word on it? No thanks. As much as I'm against Apple and their policy, these statements make no sense from anyone (Google, Apple, whatever). Unless you design your own phone from scratch, you can not be sure that it is secure (however, when you do that, all medium your phone may use is still not secure). It is simply not worth it. Anything in digital world is not secure (only a matter of attacker's determination and resources available to them) and there is no point in saying otherwise.

MarkSweep 12y ago
I tend to agree, it's much easier to just assume all online commutations are monitored than to try to escape the gaze of the five eyes (of Sauron). Maybe this attitude means they have already won?
- gear54rus 12y ago
  For some reason I think only diversity may help. 1000s different systems built differently are harder to milk for useful information if user is smart.. Centralization is the enemy of privacy (centralized = compromised). Unless they have an AI which can analyze such systems' patterns at the speed of light and present solutions (which is not as unbelievable as self-conscious AI) but it's still more of a fiction. Really, the problem is not in tech, it's in people. We're not fixing this one anytime soon.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- gear54rus 12y ago
  It's just.. this statement barely has any meaning to it then. Carefully crafted sentences, yes, but what difference does it make to the outcome, to the end user? We most certainly know that iMessage (like any other service) is not secure and now we are also left pondering if he is telling the truth or not about something that doesn't even matter in the end :) Maybe I'm being too critical or maybe I'm missing something.

hadoukenio 12y ago

3 words - National Security Letter. Take what Timmy says with a grain of salt, until they should you the source code. Oh wait... Apple fan boys: bring on the downvotes, but enjoy your surveilling

ejr 12y ago
I didn't downvote you, but I imagine it has less to do with what you said and more with how you said it. NSLs as a "boogeyman" is a poor substitute for lacking evidence. So far, we know that these things are sent to US companies which are in the business of collecting and bartering data. While Apple has a corner of that market, it isn't its entirety. So here they have snippets of our information Ex: email, credit card, home address for app purchases. However, it's just as possible to use the phone normally without downloading a single app. That leaves the SIM provider holding the bag for your information ready to be collected by the authorities. Effectively, Apple washes its hands of your data on phone calls, but there is no reason to presume lies regarding backdoors on iMessage. Also, I'm not an "Apple fan boy". I'm just unconvinced of widespread eavesdropping at Apple and that they're willing to risk destroying such a massive advantage over Google's Hangouts platform.
- efdee 12y ago
  In a post-Snowden world, when it comes to leaking your data, companies are guilty until proven innocent. That is the only sensible stance to take given what we have learned in the last year.
  - hadoukenio 12y ago
    This. The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells Congress that the NSA doesn't conduct intelligence on American citizens, and then later gets caught out. He committed Perjury without any ramifications. Why do people think that CEOs are telling the truth when they are all in the same boat paddling up shit river?

yeahmayb 12y ago

"Our business is not based on having information about you. You’re not our product. Our product are these, and this watch, and Macs and so forth. And so we run a very different company. I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. And you should really understand what’s happening to that data. And companies I think should be very transparent about it." Honestly, I am starting to see the wisdom behind consumers choosing the companies with these kinds of business models. Its not that I dont trust the companies -- I guess its that I accept that governments and laws transcend companies and their explicit arrangements with their consumers.

camillomiller 12y ago
For as much as you may criticize Apple for many things, you can't really say they are not sincere when they say something like this. A company has to make profits, and profits come from a well executed business plan. Apple's business plan is to sell hardware and create software and platforms that drive hardware sales. Collecting data for reasons that are not related to the functioning of a service makes no sense for the bottom line. Google makes profit selling ads crafted on people's data and a new controlled user accessing the Internet is entering its realm. That is good for the bottom line. It may be an oversimplification, but I guess that you can say a lot and get back to this. Anything that has to do with NSA mass surveillance, though, shouldn't be transposed on this discourse. Not Tim Cook, nor Larry Page, nor any other CEO, individually and in their function, can possibly know everything about their company. Fifth columns, NSA rats, unconstitutional secret requests of information... They are American citizens, running American organizations they have to comply to the rules or they may compromise billions of shareholders dollars. But are they lying to us right now? I think they are not, because it will hurt their bottom lines more than ever. Is Google in a weaker position than Apple because of the very nature of its business model based on data collection? Absolutely yes. The problem is ingrained with the system though and the only solution is to extirpate the cancer called NSA. I doubt it will happen anytime soon, though. We all love our gadgets and services too much, and we don't really have time to wrap our brain around such big problems for nerds.

epoxyhockey 12y ago

Apple is a PRISM participant, as of Oct 2012 (one year after Steve Jobs died). I highly doubt any iMessage is more secure than a plain text SMS sent via any cell carrier's network. Apple probably offers a sexy interface for the Feds to read everything. Reference: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-slide-51.jpg http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-sl...

epoxyhockey 12y ago
Do any down-voters care to offer a comment? Is it that one contests that Apple is a PRISM participant?
- iLoch 12y ago
  I think you're being downvoted because you got a little too excited while bashing Apple. iMessage is most certainly more secure than plain text in most cases, save for the VERY exceptional case where the NSA might be watching IF they do have a key on your phone. Plus, anyone who's used Apple's partner portals knows they're just as capable of shitty design as everyone else.
  - spacefight 12y ago
    "In most cases" isn't enough any more these days. People are targeted alone by metadata - and killed too.
  - epoxyhockey 12y ago
    Thanks for the insight. Rather than excitement, I am actually most disappointed in Apple caving into the PRISM scheme because I hold them to a bit higher standard than other companies when it comes to privacy.. kind of like being told that Santa doesn't exist.
- cbr 12y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but the leaked PRISM docs don't show "participation". They show that the NSA was getting the data. If they were doing it by, ex, inter-datacenter fiber tapping then Apple wouldn't have "participated" or even known about the leak.

pilif 12y ago

There is zero control over what public keys get handed over to your phone to encrypt an iMessage with. For all we know, whenever you want to send a message to $USER, your phone gets a public key for $USERs iPhone, her iPad and the NSA master key. Tim Cook can state that they can't decrypt the message all he wants, but as long as there's no control over what public keys we encrypt the message with, the statement that Apple or the NSA can't read the messages is a half-truth at best. Don't use iMessage for anything you wouldn't be using email for. Assume every message you send over iMessage to be public. >If the government laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can’t provide it. It’s encrypted and we don’t have a key. And so it’s sort of — the door is closed. But the government can (and probably has) force you to have the phones send a copy of every message to some government server encrypted with the government's public key. They don't need to subpoena messages - they already got them all.

jacquesm 12y ago
> Assume every message you send over iMessage to be public. You should assume any message that you send over the internet to be public unless you're a crypto expert. And if you want to go one step further then you should probably consider anything you type into a computer to be public.
mehrdada 12y ago
"as long as there's no control over what public keys we encrypt the message with, the statement that Apple or the NSA can't read the messages is a half-truth at best." This. That said, it is reasonable to believe the way iMessage is architected would likely make mass surveillance harder in general, just like widespread use of SSL does, so it is not entirely useless either. The bigger problem IMO is that they then upload the message database unencrypted (from server's standpoint) to iCloud in the backup process (which is admittedly optional, but effectively on for most users). That, of course, is easily readable, as the celebrity hack shows.
- dogecoinbase 12y ago
  make mass surveillance harder in general More specifically, it makes it so that Apple is not forced to conduct mass surveillance by giving up everything when they receive a legal wiretap order, in the vein of Lavabit. If you see someone else running a message system that has no way for the cops to read it, that should be a sign that it's insecure -- not technologically, but architecturally.

ruuki 12y ago

The tech heroes of our age are becoming some kind of politicians, this is very sad.

skuhn 12y ago

It's nice to see that he thinks user privacy is something valuable, and that this is an issue worth talking about. However, I think he's really only addressing one of the three ways that user data can be compromised when it's held by a company: 1. Selling or using it internally (e.g. Google's ad targeting) 2. Stolen by criminals (e.g. Apple's recent snafu) 3. Requisitioned by the government (e.g. Yahoo's daily fines for refusing to join PRISM) Data that isn't collected in the first place can't be lost, but that isn't always possible (and it often defeats the entire purpose of the service). I think he's mostly talking about the first one, that Apple hasn't built their business around harvesting user data to feed advertising or other systems. I think that's laudable. I would rather a company focus their energies on one product, rather than selling a byproduct of their real money maker. I also don't really like being the fuel for a free service -- I'd rather pay for what I use and have everything above board. Security is where I think Apple has its biggest problem with user privacy. Relative to companies like Google, they just aren't very good at running Internet services. Despite operating several huge services (iTunes, a CDN that handles iOS updates, iCloud, etc.), they aren't an Internet company at heart. Google and others are leaps and bounds above them in this regard. They can improve this with hiring and changing the culture in those groups, and I think they started this process a year or two ago. It will take some time, and they're never going to be the world's best at this stuff. Tim Cook touches on the third point a little, and some people think he is being disingenuous in his description of how iMessage works. I think that it doesn't really matter. It's great that Apple has designed a system that places an emphasis on keeping user conversations private, but there is literally nothing that they can do about government interference if they want to continue operating as a legal entity. I hope that they do everything in their power to curb government overreach. Ultimately the government will get what they want. Simply building a system designed to keep you from accessing the data that flows through it is not sufficient: you will be forced to subvert that system or face serious consequences. I strongly believe that the only way people will ever have privacy from the government again is to decentralize the Internet and the services that run on it. I doubt that a political solution is possible now that pandora's box has been opened, and it seems like it will only become more widespread as companies have to answer to more governments around the world and the technology to broadly intercept traffic becomes more commonplace.

natch 12y ago

This statement is not enough... there could still be a third party (e.g. law enforcement) with a key or for more plausible deniability, a portion of a key (n bits out of N), and the statement would still be true. If they can do so truthfully, they should also state that nobody else other than the user has a key or any portion of a key, and that there are no keys or portions of keys in escrow where anybody else can conceivably get at them.

Luker88 12y ago

It's Encrypted, and We Don't Have a Key. But it's not open source so you don't get to check. ... and we control the key distribution. We also do control your device, so technically, we don't need the key. Fixed that for him.

spacefight 12y ago
And we put music on your device without asking you.

Thesaurus 12y ago

Jobs is rolling over in his graves, Cook is a shill. Jobs kept the five-eyes out of Apple's shit until he croaked.

atmosx 12y ago

Let's take this to the extreme: If you are threat to the NSA, you'd use an iPhone to send a message because Tim Cook said it's encrypted? YES - NO - I DON'T KNOW ps. Let's wait for Apple to do a better job at keeping private naked pictures people make for fun using an iPhone and we'll talk iMessage encryption later.

chj 12y ago

"we don't have a key, at this moment". Come on, Apple is still able to get your messages. Next time when you set up your iPhone, and if the messages are downloaded to your new device, you know they have access as well.

lazylizard 12y ago

erm. "with every mention of 'encryption' comes the issue of 'key management'? " ? and possibly a subset of 'key management', 'key exchange'..?

KaiserPro 12y ago

Does that mean its just a ROT13 cipher? I mean its technically encrypted, but also doesn't need a key...

ganessh 12y ago

But the NSA do have the keys :p just kidding

scragg 12y ago

> we finally got an agreement from the administration to release how many times we had national security orders on Apple. And in a six month period, and we had to release a range, because they won’t let us say the exact number, it’s between zero and 250. That’s the lowest number you can quote. Zero to 250. So does anyone else think this might be a bad number (being so low)? If the NSA had access to everything, wouldn't you expect the official requests for data to be low and not because Apple doesn't store data or it's all encrypted anyway as Cook implies.

Istof 12y ago

all these claims are worthless when you are not even administrator on the device you use... (they have access to your messages before they get encrypted...)

aespinoza 12y ago

Honestly, I really don't care if they have the key or not. My concern is if they can read my messages. I am more worried about backdoors added to iMessage by Apple. This is known to happen often in Apple products, maybe for the purpose of Development or Support, but it is still there. That is exactly what I want to know. Because if Apple can use that backdoor, a patient hacker can too.

MBCook 12y ago
> This is known to happen often in Apple products, maybe for the purpose of Development or Support, but it is still there. Could you elaborate on this? Are you talking about the development tools that require your phone to be cabled to a laptop?
- aespinoza 12y ago
  This is just one example: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2456967/security0/apple-inadvertently-admitted-to-ios-backdoor-forensics-expert.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2456967/security0/apple-... But if you google it, you'll find more.
r00fus 12y ago
What known backdoors?

blueking 12y ago

But the key is accessible through the backdoor we put in all your devices. Oh and we joined PRISM http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/2013-06-06_15h31_24.jpg http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/...

autism_hurts 12y ago

Wasn't there a leaked FBI PowerPoint that very explicitly stated that they can't intercept iMessages? (and it was a point of frustration)

tolmasky 12y ago

He should instead just have said "Have you tried iMessage?? Its a disaster, we couldn't pull messages out of there even if we wanted to. Be thankful anything shows up on the screen at all!"

kristianp 12y ago

Apparently skype uses encryption, according to: https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encryption https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encrypt...