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iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

security.apple.com

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Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#71

Post by sneak »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #32
yesimahuman wrote: post #11

Pretty great advertisement for Signal, as the sole cross-platform option in the PQC bucket. Does it seem likely they will match Apple here eventually?

In my experience, these markets can overlap but don’t necessarily always do so. I message everyone via iMessage, and while I enjoy the feeling of security from the blue bubble it’s not a must-have for me. Signal on the other hand seems like a must-have for many people living under oppressive regimes or whose data is significantly more valuable than mine. I am one data point, but that’s what I’ve noticed in my bubble.

[flagged]

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#72

Post by zchrykng »

galad87 wrote: post #16
fh9302 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either have to enable E2EE or disable both Messages in iCloud and device backups. Otherwise the device backups contain a copy of your messages.

The "Messages in iCloud" sync is end to end, so you can enable it and disable iCloud backup, or manually backup on your computer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

Yeah, it is end to end encrypted, but the keys are part of your device's iCloud backup. So unless you turn on end to end encryption for that backup or disable it, Apple can access the keys required to decrypt the iMessage in iCloud messages.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#73

Post by modeless »

xoa wrote: post #20
soxicywn wrote: 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.

> 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…

It's not strange in the slightest. Apple deserves criticism until they fix this. They're going around claiming "end-to-end" and people don't understand that they are constantly handing over people's decrypted messages to law enforcement. It's misleading at best; I call it fraud. It's not as though Apple is merely failing to prevent a third party from breaking their end-to-end encryption here. Apple does it itself! iMessage and iCloud are not separate companies operating independently. The right hand knows what the left is doing!

This is not a UX issue or an engineering issue. Apple already built end-to-end encryption for sensitive data types that is still recoverable from backups even if you lose all your devices and forget your iCloud account password. They do it the same way Google does, and they already use it by default for important stuff you don't want to lose like passwords stored in Keychain and health data and a bunch of other stuff too. Literally all they need to do is store the iMessage encryption keys in this system by default. They continuously choose not to, and the reason is reported by Reuters to be a secret compromise agreement with the FBI. https://web.archive.org/web/20200121123026/https://www.reute...

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#74

Post by gjsman-1000 »

azinman2 wrote: post #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…

Yeah, that’s what the NSA has said forever - but it turns out that all encryption has that human factor.

Imagine I’m planning something malicious. If I literally do anything other than talk about it, there’s going to be evidence, and that evidence won’t be encrypted.

Plus, crack-proof encryption existed at least back to Roman times - simply because making a secure code was fairly easy and we didn’t have codebreakers. We managed.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#75

Post by kanbara »

azinman2 wrote: post #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…

people commit crimes with: cars, money, public transit, restaurants, food, bathrooms, roads, … why don’t we get rid of all that?

we don’t remove all rights to privacy for people in their homes because criminals use homes too. tech should be no different

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#76

Post by QuizzicalCarbon »

azinman2 wrote: post #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…

Those “bad outcomes” already existed pre encryption. If anything, it’ll be more of the same.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#77

Post by sneak »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #5
etchalon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still required.

I don't anticipate this changing either - because, let's face it, losing all of your Photos and Messages is, to most people, a bigger deal than perfect security. I'm experienced with Apple products - but there was one time that I actually got stuck in an E2EE loop and was forced to reset all E2EE data on iCloud. I don't know what I did wrong - but if someone in tech, like myself, can get stuck in an E2EE lockout, I c…

iMessage’s practical lack of e2ee isn’t a matter of “perfect security”. It’s simply not e2ee because the keys are escrowed to the middle service. It’s not even a little bit secure. The encryption has been fully backdoored by sharing the endpoint keys off of the device.

Apple turns over customer data on over 70,000 customers per year without a warrant under FISA/702 (prism) and NSLs. The number gets bigger every year. This isn’t a theoretical threat. The number is even bigger if you include all the search warrants, too.

EDIT: Even if you enable their optional e2ee for backups (which nobody does), iMessage the platform is still vulnerable because the conversations you have with others are insecure because the other end of the conversation is escrowing their keys to Apple via non-e2ee backups. If you enable ADP iMessage only becomes secure for the case where you are only iMessaging yourself.

It’s simply not private or secure. You can’t be “slightly encrypted” or “mostly private”.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#78

Post by robjan »

azinman2 wrote: post #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…

Widely used unbreakable encryption has been available in chat apps for at least a decade and hasn't led us down that slippery slope yet. PQ3 is just future proofing what we already have.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#79

Post by jwells89 »

yesimahuman wrote: post #34
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, these markets can overlap but don’t necessarily always do so. I message everyone via iMessage, and while I enjoy the feeling of security from the blue bubble it’s not a must-have for me. Signal on the other hand seems like a must-have for many people living under oppressive regimes or whose data is significantly more valuable than mine. I am one data point, but that’s what I’ve noticed in my bubble.

For me, Signal is so much better for my friend or work group chats. My friends are on a mix of devices and platforms, and Signal is a lot nicer for embedded media sharing. And the auto disappearing feature is a must!

The main things holding back Signal usage in my case is practically nobody in my social circle using it and the desktop client not being as nice as that of Messages or Telegram, the latter being particularly relevant for myself and contacts who primarily message with their computers rather than their phones.

Re: iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol

#80

Post by gjsman-1000 »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #15

This is pretty fascinating. For easier reading, the Signal blog post [0] they link to is great. Both Signal and Apple went with CRYSTALS-Kyber [1] as their post-quantum algorithm. If you're interested in the math, and maybe learned at some point about how classic public key cryptography is built on the idea that it's easy to multiply two primes, but hard to factor them, and how this (or other math problems) can be us…

Was the CRYSTALS-Kyber name intentionally, or accidentally, a reference to Kyber Crystals (I.e. The Lightsaber energy source?)
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