Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 393 posts

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#111

Post by hendersoon »

I have no doubt the features work exactly the way Apple said they do. Seriously.

I very much doubt that they will refuse to scan for whatever China asks. I very much doubt they'll risk the PRC shutting down Foxconn factories.

I very much doubt Apple will ultimately be able to resist scanning for whatever the US Government asks in a national security letter attached to a gag order. They will take them to a secret court session which we'll never hear about, the court will rule in the government's favor, and Apple will be forced to comply and not allowed to tell anybody.

This happened to Cloudflare and they were gagged while fighting it for 4 years. They didn't win in court, but the government eventually dropped the case as it was no longer needed. And this started under Obama, not Trump.

Now, will Apple bother to fight this out in court? I think they probably will. But we won't know about that until they either definitively win or the government gives up. If the government wins, on the other hand, we'll NEVER hear about it.

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#113

Post by conradev »

slg wrote: post #51
kemayo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there is no way to audit that the database is what they claim it is, doesn't contain multiple databases that can be activated under certain conditions, etc. Although this is true, the same argument already applies to "your phone might be scanning all your photos and stealthily uploading them" -- Apple having announced this program doesn't seem to have changed the odds of that. At some point you have to trust yo…

Which is why I am confused by a lot of this backlash. Apple already controls the hardware, software, and services. I don't see why it really matters where in that chain the scanning is done when they control the entire system. If Apple can't be trusted with this control today, why did people trust them with this control a week ago?

Yeah. I will say, though, I am happy that people are having the uncomfortable realization that they have very little control over what their iPhone does.

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#114

Post by pseudalopex »

kemayo wrote: post #110
pseudalopex wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't startling people trust they can opt out of iCloud photos.

If you trust that you can opt out of iCloud Photos to avoid server-side scanning, trusting that this on-device scanning only happens as part of the iCloud Photos upload process (with the only way it submits the reports being as metadata attached to the photo-upload, as far as I can tell) seems equivalent. There's certainly a slippery-slope argument, where some future update might change that scanning behavior. But th…

I trust Apple doesn't upload everyone's photos despite opting out because it would be hard to hide.

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#115

Post by FabHK »

Syonyk wrote: post #78
concinds wrote: post #68

I strongly considered switching away from Apple products last weekend; but this document has convinced me otherwise. The threats people identify have minimal risk. If a total stranger offers you a bottle of water, you may worry about it being spiked, but him having offered the bottle doesn't make it more, or less, likely that he'll stab you after you accept it. They're separate events, no "slippery slope". It's very…

I understand the technologies they're proposing deploying at a decent level (I couldn't implement the crypto with my current skills, but what they're doing in the PSI paper makes a reasonable amount of sense). The problem is that this "hard" technological core (the crypto) is subject to an awful lot of "soft" policy issues around the edge - and there's nothing but "Well, we won't do that!" in there. Plus, the whole T…

> Even if this, alone isn't enough to convince you to move off Apple, are you comfortable with the trends now clearly visible?

Still much better than all but the most esoteric inconvenient alternatives.

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#117

Post by [deleted] »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #92

In other HN comments on this subject I've (hopefully) made it clear that I'm not really in favor of this project of Apple's, and that there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument to be made here. So I hope people will entertain a contrarian question without downvoting me into oblivion. :) Here's the thing I keep circling around: assume that bad actors, government or otherwise, want to target political dissidents us…

[deleted]

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#118

Post by corndoge »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #92

In other HN comments on this subject I've (hopefully) made it clear that I'm not really in favor of this project of Apple's, and that there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument to be made here. So I hope people will entertain a contrarian question without downvoting me into oblivion. :) Here's the thing I keep circling around: assume that bad actors, government or otherwise, want to target political dissidents us…

What's the contrarion question?

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#119

Post by smichel17 »

kemayo wrote: post #29
almostdigital wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's true, although to do some sort of mass scanning stealthily they would need a system exactly like what they built with this, if they tried to upload everything for scanning the data use would be enormous and give it away. I guess it comes down to that I don't trust an OS vendor that ships an A.I. based snitch program that they promise will be dormant.

Speaking cynically, I think that them having announced this program like they did makes it less likely that they have any sort of nefarious plans for it. There's a lot of attention being paid to it now, and it's on everyone's radar going forwards. If they actually wanted to be sneaky, we wouldn't have known about this for ages.

You're making the mistake of anthropomorphizing a corporation. Past a certain size, corporations start behaving less like people and more like computers, or maybe profit-maximizing sociopaths. The intent doesn't matter, because 5 or 10 years down the line, it'll likely be a totally different set of people making the decision. If you want to predict a corporation's behavior, you need to look at the constants (or at least, slower-changing things), like incentives, legal/technical limitations, and internal culture/structure of decision-making (e.g. How much agency do individual humans have?).

Re: Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

#120

Post by kemayo »

pseudalopex wrote: post #114
kemayo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you trust that you can opt out of iCloud Photos to avoid server-side scanning, trusting that this on-device scanning only happens as part of the iCloud Photos upload process (with the only way it submits the reports being as metadata attached to the photo-upload, as far as I can tell) seems equivalent. There's certainly a slippery-slope argument, where some future update might change that scanning behavior. But th…

I trust Apple doesn't upload everyone's photos despite opting out because it would be hard to hide.

I bet it'd take a while. The initial sync for someone with a large library is big, but just turning on upload for new pictures is only a few megabytes a day. Depending on how many pictures you take, of course. And if you're caught, an anodyne "a bug in iCloud Photo sync was causing increased data usage" statement and note in the next iOS patch notes would have you covered.

And that's assuming they weren't actively hiding anything by e.g. splitting them up into chunks that could be slipped into legitimate traffic with Apple's servers.

Post reply on HN