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Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

reuters.com

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Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#281

Post by chrisseaton »

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #278
GeekyBear wrote: post #207

>there's no good and easy option to backup your phone other than iCloud. Turn off iCloud and do local encrypted backups to your PC or Mac. This works over your wifi network (if you prefer wireless charging at home) or via a cable connection.

What is this backup encrypted with? If I lose my phone, what do I need to restore it to a new phone?

Why do people care about phone backups anymore? I don't think I have any apps that don't store everything in the cloud. There's nothing of value that's only on my phone. I could toss it in the bin and set up a new one now and not lose anything.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#282

Post by kohtatsu »

PSA: libimobiledevice exists and supports native encrypted backup/restores for iPhones using the idevicebackup2 utility. You can also disable iCloud backups from there for fun.

https://www.libimobiledevice.org/

Not excusing Apple. This is a disgrace, first in China now here.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#283

Post by overcast »

chrisseaton wrote: post #281
djannzjkzxn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this backup encrypted with? If I lose my phone, what do I need to restore it to a new phone?

Why do people care about phone backups anymore? I don't think I have any apps that don't store everything in the cloud. There's nothing of value that's only on my phone. I could toss it in the bin and set up a new one now and not lose anything.

Because syncing isn't a backup? What happens when you sync corrupted files?

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#284

Post by kohtatsu »

kohtatsu wrote: post #282

PSA: libimobiledevice exists and supports native encrypted backup/restores for iPhones using the idevicebackup2 utility. You can also disable iCloud backups from there for fun. https://www.libimobiledevice.org/ Not excusing Apple. This is a disgrace, first in China now here.

With the ifuse utility you can even mount a subset of your iPhone's storage as a FUSE filesystem. (If it's jailbroken you can mount all of it)

Doing so I was able to read the SQLite database Photos uses on my girlfriend's iPhone to migrate only photos she had favourited to her new phone; she hated the idea of moving them all over so much that she was ready to let the best ones perish.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#285

Post by someonehere »

Apple is not 100% secured against SIM swapping. There’s an option to have an SMS sent with your 2FA code as another option. I know because I’ve done this before and was wondering when Apple would let you use a hardware token or virtual MFA as an option like in my Google account.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#286

Post by overcast »

chrisseaton wrote: post #281
djannzjkzxn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this backup encrypted with? If I lose my phone, what do I need to restore it to a new phone?

Why do people care about phone backups anymore? I don't think I have any apps that don't store everything in the cloud. There's nothing of value that's only on my phone. I could toss it in the bin and set up a new one now and not lose anything.

Because syncing isn't a backup? What happens when you sync corrupted files? Same reason RAID isn't a backup, yet that one continues to crop up.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#287

Post by fragmede »

wnevets wrote: post #217
justapassenger wrote: post #191

Wonder if this will help to kill a meme, about how much Apple cares about users and what great values they have, how they're going to stand for the user, fight with governments, etc. While iPhone itself is pretty secure as a device phone (and Apple makes sure to remind you about that in each ad, public speaking, attacks on competitors, etc), as an ecosystem it's not secure. And it's like that on purpose - there's no…

>Wonder if this will help to kill a meme, aboyt how much Apple cares about users and what great values they have, Probably not. The keyboards on their laptops are barely functional but it doesn't stop people from saying how great they are.

It's true the butterfly keyboards have issues, but there's no need to be dramatic about it.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#288

Post by Shank »

skrowl wrote: post #265

For comparison, Google end-to-end encrypts Android backups with your lock screen PIN/pattern (which isn't known to Google). Source - https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h...

Offline attacks for a motivated adversary, like NSA, are trivial on low strength security measures, like a standard PIN, numeric only PIN, or pattern. Only a strong passphrase would really help you.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#289

Post by ehsankia »

_bxg1 wrote: post #206

> aboyt how much Apple cares about users No company cares about anything. A company is not a person. Apple, because of its privacy-marketing, is incentivized to be the privacy player in the market. But only so far as consumers keep them honest about it. They got away with this loophole because it stayed under the radar; if it gets enough attention and enough customers show that it matters to them, it could change. On…

Isn't Android at this point a more secure OS? The price for zero days at least is signaling that.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#290

Post by fragmede »

saghm wrote: post #160
klodolph wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hard line is too facile. If you are paranoid about malicious code updates, then making part of your stack open-source doesn’t matter. I could push an update to your OS that reads the keys out of your BitWarden.

Of course, there are open source operating systems out there...

The seminal "Trusting Trust" paper, by Ken Thompson, in 1984, is remarkable for being as relevant today as ever, and should be required reading. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
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