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iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

security.apple.com

61–70 of 280 posts

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#61

Advanced encryption, until it comes time to text 70% of the phones in the world, in which case it defaults to a protocol released 32 years ago.

The top 7 phones sold last year were all iPhones. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/21/iphones-top-7-best-sell... Too bad the other vendors don’t bother keeping up.

that's only 16% of total market.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#62
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only solution to that right now is for you and your contact to turn on Advanced Data Protection or don't use icloud backup. Also, confusingly "messages in icloud" is end to end encrypted, and enabling it disables messages for being included in icloud backup.

Nothing is secure that goes to a server. Period. Apple turned over iMessage conversations between journalists and senators at Trumps request. They encrypt but give away the keys in many jurisdictions.

>Apple turned over iMessage conversations between journalists and senators at Trumps request.

source?

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#63

Would be great if we could uninstall iMessage completely out of iPhone for security reasons or make it opt in by default. Unfortunately it's not possible and it will be a gateway for security issues and malware in the following years to come. Post quantum cryptography is nice but that's one of the smallest problems with iMessage.

You can entirely disable iMessage (and FaceTime, and Siri, etc) via provisioning profiles on a managed device. Use Apple Configurator 2 to do so.

(A very important privacy setting with no corresponding toggle in the UI that can only be set via a configuration profile is the option to not auto sync your list of recently emailed people to iCloud (“Disable recents syncing”). This leaks your email contact history and social graph to Apple if you have iCloud turned on, even if you aren’t using an Apple email account and aren’t using iCloud Contacts. AFAIK there’s no way to disable it other than via configuration profile.)

This is what I do.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#64

Would be great if we could uninstall iMessage completely out of iPhone for security reasons or make it opt in by default. Unfortunately it's not possible and it will be a gateway for security issues and malware in the following years to come. Post quantum cryptography is nice but that's one of the smallest problems with iMessage.

I don't intend to dispute your stance here, but I am interested in understanding a bit more about it. Do you mind giving an example and what the alternative(s) are?

Search for "Pegasus, NSO, spyware, imessage" or https://archive.is/4fl6o

One quote from the article: “Your iPhone, and a billion other Apple devices out-of-the-box, automatically run famously insecure software to preview iMessages, whether you trust the sender or not,” said security researcher Bill Marczak, a fellow at Citizen Lab, a research institute based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. “Any Computer Security 101 student could spot the flaw here.”

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#65
post #17
post #2

Does anyone know if this is still vulnerable to the iCloud Backups problem? The only solution to that right now is for you and your contact to turn on Advanced Data Protection. Curious if that’s still required.

>The only solution to that right now is for you and your contact to turn on Advanced Data Protection or don't use icloud backup. Also, confusingly "messages in icloud" is end to end encrypted, and enabling it disables messages for being included in icloud backup.

If everyone you iMessage with has iCloud Backup still enabled (and I guarantee you 100% that they do because it is the default), then you turning yours off does nothing, as all of your conversations remain readable by Apple via the escrowed keys of the other endpoints.

iMessage is not e2ee.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#66
Just as a reminder making crack-proof encryption standard everywhere is a trade off. It’s often discussed and presented in forums like this as the only and just choice (and I believe net it is), but in doing so WILL lead to bad outcomes. Terrible crimes, unsolvable murders, large scale terrorism, emboldened enemies attacking a country, more successful coups, etc. It would be nice as a community to acknowledge nothing comes for free and every technology is a double edged sword. I wish more of these double edge swords could be debated by the public it affects, although it’s out of the scope of comprehension and thoughtfulness by most. And yet we all make the choices that will affect generations…

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#67
post #51
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone know if this is still vulnerable to the iCloud Backups problem? The only solution to that right now is for you and your contact to turn on Advanced Data Protection. This is such a strange two sentences as a "problem". E2EE security, as it says in the name, is about the protection of dara transmission between two trusted end points. That's it. What the trusted end points themselves choose to do with that…

> No communication service stops people from backing up with encryption or not, local or remote, or from copy/pasting or for that matter taking photos of the screen ("analog hole"). At least for the first part on backing up without copy pasting or using the “analog hole”, Signal expressly prohibits and doesn’t allow any kind of backup — encrypted or not — on iOS/iPadOS/macOS.

This lack of backups makes Signal less appealing to anyone who isn't a security/privacy enthusiast/nut. 99+% of people want their messages to work and not lose them when their phone is broken.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#68
post #63

Would be great if we could uninstall iMessage completely out of iPhone for security reasons or make it opt in by default. Unfortunately it's not possible and it will be a gateway for security issues and malware in the following years to come. Post quantum cryptography is nice but that's one of the smallest problems with iMessage.

You can entirely disable iMessage (and FaceTime, and Siri, etc) via provisioning profiles on a managed device. Use Apple Configurator 2 to do so. (A very important privacy setting with no corresponding toggle in the UI that can only be set via a configuration profile is the option to not auto sync your list of recently emailed people to iCloud (“Disable recents syncing”). This leaks your email contact history and soc…

interesting!

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#69
post #59

Would be great if we could uninstall iMessage completely out of iPhone for security reasons or make it opt in by default. Unfortunately it's not possible and it will be a gateway for security issues and malware in the following years to come. Post quantum cryptography is nice but that's one of the smallest problems with iMessage.

Wouldn't SMS be more insecure?

For message security, absolutely. For endpoint security (iMessage as exploit surface), not so much.
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